THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

THE MAGIC

OF SPAIN

BY AUBREY F. G. BELL

Or vous aurez loisir
Cheminant en Espagne
Bien que maintes montagnes
11 vous faudra monter.

Pilgrims' Song.

LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD,
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXII.

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND EECCLES.

NOTE

THIS is rather a collection of stray notes
on Spain than a connected study — of
notes from many pleasant hours of
Spanish literature and travel, but per-
haps of too individual an interest to appear without
some apology. No reference will be found to those
great social and political problems which disturb
Spanish life. To fill the idler moments of a Spanish
holiday, and possibly to help the reader to feel that
"parfum du terroir" which pervades Spain, is the
unambitious object of these pages. Better still, if
he turns from them in dissatisfaction to authoritative
writers on Spanish life and letters, and to the magic-
land of Spanish literature itself. For permission to
reprint some of these short essays in slightly altered
form the author 1 is to thank the Editors of the
Morning Post, the Outlook, and the Queen.

PREFACE

IT is not easy in a few words to account for the
strange Oriental spell that Spain has exercised
over many minds nor to explain the potency
of its attraction. For indeed the great Penin-
sula possesses a special spice and flavour. It has not
the immemorial culture of Italy, nor the pleasant
smiling landscapes of France with her green meadows
and crystal streams. The old Iberia, that dura tellus,
has a peculiar raciness. Its colour is often harsh and
crude ; many of its districts are barren and discom-
fortable. The bleak and rocky uplands and the
ragged sierra ridges cut the countiy into sharp
divisions and cause it to be thinly and variously
populated. On those uplands the breath of the wind
is often icy and the sun strikes with a biting force.
Great parched and desolate plains extend treeless and
unprotected two thousand feet above the sea. The
villages at distant intervals are of the colour of the
soil, and scarcely to be distinguished from a mass of
yellow-brown rocks. Morning and evening a string
of mules may be seen outlined on the horizon, for the
peasants set out in bands to till their distant fields ;
or a shepherd with his flock of sheep, or goats,

viii PREFACE

relieves the strange monotony of this dust-laden
windy desert. Nothing could be sadder or less har-
monious than the peasants' harsh and strident singing,
the very peculiarity of which has, however, a
piquancy and charm. Hard too is their language,
with its clean gutturals, far rougher and manlier than
the musical sister-tongue of Italy. All points to a
like conclusion, that this is no country of comfort and
soft languorous delight, but of a quaint and forcible
originality, where the most jaded mind may be braced
and inspirited and find a fresher and more stirring
life.

In Spain the sharpness of contrasts precludes any
feeling of weariness or satiety. There are regions of
luxuriant growth and African sun bounded by moun-
tains of eternal snow. Through the plain a river
glides among orange groves and grey olives ; in the
shaded patios of the city silver fountains keep the air
cool and fresh, and on the coldest night in winter the
temperature is still some degrees above the freezing-
point. Yet here, in the most fiery heat of summer,
we may lift up our eyes to the hills and look on the
snowy sierra against the deep blue of the sky; and
if a shower, in this region of little rain, falls upon
the low-lying districts, it adds but another coat of
whiteness to the neighbouring range. It is indeed
a strange and fascinating land, a Land voll Sonnen-
schein and fierce blinding light, yet a land of shrill,
piercing blasts and icy air, a land of many various
elements both of climate and population. It is no
wonder that its inhabitants are of a character strongly

PREFACE ix

individual and preserve the original Iberian strain.
A racy pithiness of speech is theirs. In no country
are proverbs more common, and a string of them can
indeed form a peasant's conversation, pungent as the
rosaries of red piments that hang on the balconies of
farms.

It was in Spain that the rogue-story, the novela
de picaros, originated, and the Spanish novelists of
the last thirty years have given free rein to the local
types of various parts of Spain. Nowhere has
provincialism continued to be so clearly marked. In
other countries better communications have corrupted
the local manners into a conformity of excellence.
In Spain the nature of the country, with its rough
mountain barriers and turbulent unnavigable rivers,
still protects originality and keeps the character of
the provinces distinct, and the native of Andalucia
continues to despise the native of Galicia and to be
ridiculed by the native of Castille. This does not
make for material prosperity, but it constitutes a
country of the picturesque and unexpected, a country
where imagination is not dead, and where the artist
and poet find their true home. Not the least attrac-
tion to them perhaps is the Spanish improvidence
and absence of method, and the gay living from hand
to mouth. An unwary traveller in the wilder districts
may easily find himself half-perishing from scarcity
of food, and lost in an intricate labyrinth of ways
between far-distant villages. "A bad thing, sirs, it
is to have a lack of bread," sang the poet of the
twelfth-century Poema del Cid. The hardy peasant

x PREFACE

of the poorer regions lives scantily from day to day
on the product of the niggard soil, won by patient
labour. The peasant in more fertile parts does not
necessarily fare better, but he labours magnificently
less. The deliberate method of prosperity and success
is held in small esteem. The mighty Empire of Spain
was in fact the affair of a generation only. From
the time of Philip II. onwards the Spanish Empire
might aptly be compared with the Cid's corpse, for,
though by its prestige and the favour of heaven it
might continue to reap fresh victories, it was never-
theless irrevocably dead and awaiting dissolution.
And it is the improvidence of Spain that has charmed
the foreigner. For, eager as he is to admire its poetic
aspects, in his inmost soul he often regards himself as
incomparably superior, and hurries home to civilization
with a sheaf of curious details negligently gleaned.

The courteous Spaniard conceals his contempt for
the foreigner, but were he privileged to read the
numerous sketches, scenes, and saunterings published
yearly of Spain, he would have some scope for legiti-
mate amusement. A faint remonstrance has indeed
been heard in the Peninsula against the idea of
Spanish grandees lying in wait at dark corners to
rob a French journalist of his fortune. But mostly
they are content to let the foreigner continue in his
ignorance. For stern and melancholy Spain retains
her secret, and is not to be won from her Oriental
impenetrable mystery by any wiles. Unchanging
and impassive, her cities seem to mock the stranger,
and the roughness of the intervening wildernesses

PREFACE xi

discourages him. But he returns again and again to
this remote and mediseval country, that in his prac-
tical eyes should be so rich and is so poor. The
repulses he receives whet his curiosity and increase his
ardour. Yet Spain is not, in spite of its many tourists,
a country of foreign colonies. To the Englishman
this fact brings a striking novelty, for he may visit
Switzerland and Italy and France and scarcely leave
the atmosphere of England, but in Spain he will find
no difficulty in following Bacon's advice to the
traveller in foreign countries to "sequester himself
from the company of his countrymen."

CONTENTS

Note .

PAGE
V

Preface

vii

I.

Spanish Character —

i. Sonic Stray Opinions ....

17

ii. Vain Generalities ....

25

II.

Travelling in Spain

47

III.

On the Spanish Frontier ....

57

IV.

Eskual-Erria —

i. Basque Country

G6

ii. Basque Customs

72

V.

In Remote Navarre

80

VI.

Spanish Cities

85

VII.

In Old Castille

92

VIII.

The Desert and the Sown

97

IX.

The Coast of Catalonia in Autumn .

104

X.

An Eastern Village

108

XI.

Off the East Coast of Spain

112

XII.

The Judging of the "Waters

120

XIII.

Seville in Winter

125

XIV.

From a Seville Housetop ....

129

XV.

February in Ani>alucia ....

134

XVI.

Some Characteristics of Spanish Literature

. 142

XIV

CONTENTS

XVII.

Tiir Form of the Cid —

i. A Primitive Masterpiece .

. 168

ii. Valencia del Cid ....

. 157

XVIII.

A Prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition—

163

ii. Salamanca University

. 165

iii. In a Valladolid Dungeon

. 169

iv. Ex forti dulcedo ....

. 178

XIX.

The Modern Spanish Novel —

i. Bevival. Fernan Caballero

. 185

. 191

iii. In the Twentieth Century

. 201

XX.

, 214

XXI.

Novels of the Mountain —

i. " Savour of the Soil "

. 222

ii. " On the Heights " ....

. 231

XXII.

. 239

XXIII.

Toledo and El Greco ....

. 244

THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

THE MAGIC OF SPAIN
<0 l

SPANISH CHARACTER
I. — Stray Opinions

TO collect a mass of isolated and contradic-
tory opinions concerning the Spanish is
a comparatively simple task, although
it is difficult or impossible to derive from
them a consistent picture of Spanish character. To
Wellington they are " this extraordinary and per-
verse people," to whom to boast of Spain's strength
was a natural weakness. "Procrastination and im-
providence are their besetting sins," says Napier,
and of their conduct in the Peninsular War : " Of pro-
verbially vivid imagination and quick resentments,
the Spaniards act individually rather than nationally,
and, during this war, what appeared constancy of
purpose was but a repetition of momentary fury
generated like electric sparks by constant collision
with the French." "The Spaniards are perfect
masters of saying everything and doing nothing."
They have dignified sentiments and lofty expressions,

B

18 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

but taken with their deeds these are " but a strong
wind blowing shrivelled leaves." "In the arrange-
ment of warlike affairs difficulties are always over-
looked by the Spaniards, who are carried on from
one phantasy to another so swiftly that the first con-
ception of an enterprise is immediately followed by
a confident anticipation of complete success." Though
they are " hasty in revenge and feeble in battle," they
are " patient to the last degree in suffering." To the
peasants he allows " a susceptibility of grand senti-
ments." They " endure calamity, men and women
alike, with a singular and unostentatious courage.
But their virtues are passive, their faults active, and,
instigated by a peculiar arrogance, they are perpetu-
ally projecting enterprises which they have not
sufficient vigour to execute." "To neglect real
resources and fasten upon imaginary projects is
peculiarly Spanish." A French writer of the same
period, General Marbot, contents himself with observ-
ing that the Spanish "ont beaucoup conserve du
caractere des Arabes et sont fatalistes; aussi rdp6-
taient-ils sans cesse 'Lo que ha de ser no puede
faltar,' " but adds that " ils ont un merite immense,
c'est que, bien que battus, ils ne se decouragent jamais."
Turning to earlier centuries we find that in Livy and
Strabo the Spaniards are obstinate, unsociable, silent,
dressed in black, despisers of death, very sober. In
the centuries of Spain's greatness the comments
naturally thicken, although they are often not easily
reconcilable. To an Italian, Paolo Cortese, at the
beginning of the sixteenth century the Spanish are,

SPANISH CHARACTER 19

iu a shower of epithets, "ambitious, good-natured,
curious, greedy, contentious, tenacious, magnificent,
suspicious, sly." Another Italian, Paolo Tiepolo, later
draws a distinction * between those who have travelled
and those who have not left Spain, those former being
" per la maggior parte avvisati, diligenti, tolleranti."
In Pepys we read of the " ceremoniousness of the
Spaniards," and that " the Spaniards are the best
disciplined foot in the world ; will refuse no extra-
ordinary service if commanded, but scorn to be paid
for it as in other countries," and of " the plain habit
of the Spaniards, how the King and Lords themselves
wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies
mantles in cold weather of white flannell." To a
learned Spaniard, Masdeu, they are, to quote but a
few of his judgments, " lively, swift in conception,
slow and thoughtful in coming to a resolution, active
and effectual in carrying it into execution. They are
the stoutest defenders of religion, and masters in
asceticism." " Their disinterestedness and honesty in
commerce is known to all. They are frugal at table,
especially averse from any excess in drinking. In
conversation they are serious and taciturn, not giving
to biting speech, courteous, affable, and pleasant ; they
hate flattery, but they respect others and look to be
respected themselves. They speak with majesty, but
without affectation. They are generous, serviceable,
kindly, and have a pleasure in conferring benefits,

1 The distinction still holds good, and those Spaniards who have
travelled, e.g. to Buenos Aires, differ by a certain practical energy
and optimism from those who have never left the Peninsula.

20 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and they exalt things foreign more than their own.
They have envy, pride, and a love of glory, but with
noble, redeeming qualities. In their attire they are
neat and moderate; when they go abroad they are
dressed well and smartly, but with a befitting
gravity." " They spend with magnificence and ex-
travagance." A French traveller, Mme. d'Aulnoy,1 in
the seventeenth century, says of the Spanish that
" Nature has been kinder to them than they are to
themselves ; they are born with more wit than others ;
they have a great quickness of mind join'd with great
solidity; they speak and deliver their words with
ease ; they have a great memory ; their style is neat
and concise, and they are quick of apprehension; it
is easie to teach them whatever they have a mind to ;
they are perfect masters in Politicks, and when there
is a necessity for it they are temperate and laborious."
..." They are patient to excess, obstinate, idle, singu-
lar philosophers ; and, as to the rest, men of honour,
keeping their words tho' it cost them their lives."
She considers their greatest defect to be a " passion
for revenge," and speaks of" theii' fantastick grandeur."
A short account by an Englishman in 1701, has little
good to say of the Spanish, except that they " have
an incomparable Zeal to plant the Catholick Religion."
He notes their sluggishness, their immorality, and it
is, moreover, impossible to distinguish a Spanish
Cavalier from a Cobler, while most of their houses

1 "The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady .

Travels into Spain." English translation. Second edition. Lon-
don. 1692.

SPANISH CHARACTER 21

are "of earth and like Mole-hills, but one storey
high." They have an " esprit orgueilleux," and treat
strangers " de turc a maure," says a Frenchman of the
same period,1 so that the Englishman may have had
some slight, some turc a maure experience in Spain.
Another Englishman,2 half a century later, writes that
the Spanish are " generous, liberal, magnificent, and
charitable ; religious without dispute, but devout to
the greatest excess of superstition." . . . "If they have
any predominant fault it is perhaps that of being
rather too high-minded ; hence they have entertained,
at different times, the most extravagant conceits." . . .
" Their cloaths are usually of a very dark colour, and
their cloaks almost black. This shows the natural
gravity of the people." ..." There are no soldiers in
the whole world braver than the Spanish." Reclus,
in his estimate of the Spanish, has boldly allowed
the contrasts and contradictions of Spanish character
to stand side by side. They are " apathetic in daily
life, but of a quick resolution, persistent courage and
unwearying tenacity. They are vain, but if any one
has a right to be so, they have. In spite of their
pride they are simple and pleasant in their manners.
They esteem themselves highly, but they are equally
ready to recognize the merit of others. They are
very swift and keen to lay a finger on the weak side
or the vices of other people, but never bemean them-
selves by despising them. They have a great store

1 Villefranche. " Etat present d'Espagne." 1717.

2 Edward Clarke. "Letters concerning the Spanish Nation."
London. 1763.

22 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

of seriousness, a rare firmness of character. They are
contented with their lot and are fatalists. A mixture
of superstition and ignorance, common-sense, and
subtle irony; they are at times ferocious, though
naturally of a magnanimous generosity, fond of
revenge, yet forgetting injuries, fond of equality, yet
guilty of oppression." The verdicts of modern Spanish
thinkers have been mostly pessimistic.1 Spaniards
in the twentieth century have been busily occupied
with analytical introspection, the result of their
national misfortunes and injured pride. They prefer
to speak atrociously of themselves than that foreigners
should speak of them only moderately well. Senor
Mallada holds 2 his countrymen to be " idle, unpractical
dreamers." In Spain, says Angel Ganivet,3 "there
are many who have no will, hay muchos enfermos
de la voluntad " — there is a lack of concentration,
that is of persistent concentration, and a lack of
proportion, of the power to consider more than
one idea, more than one aspect of a question. So
Azorin complains that "there is plenty of insight
and rapid vision, but no co-ordination of ideas or

1 This pessimism " is based on our recent disasters ; on the fact
that we are fallen, a terrible fact in the implacable merciless logic
of international life ; on the momentary lack of will from which we
are suffering ; and on the anachronism of certain vices and ideals
which, since they can no longer, as in past ages, be excused on the
ground that other nations share them, seem to show that we are
incorrigible." Rafael Altamira, "Psicologfa del Pueblo Espafiol "
(Madrid. 1902), in which will be found several of the opinions
quoted above.

2 " Los Males de la Patria."

3 "Idearium Espafiol."

SPANISH CHARACTER 23

steady fulfilment or will." L In a book by Ricardo
Leon 2 we read that the Spanish are hostile to their
rulers, whoever they may be, and of the evils of el
Caciquismo. But the author sees little hope of
change in a country where men live between two
extremes, "two fires, two fanaticisms," either reaction-
aries or demagogues ; where the current of activity
and passion are unregulated, where thought is either
stagnant or enmeshed in a gossamer woof of subtle
distinctions, and the golden mean of common-sense
is not attained. The inhabitants of Alcala are " strong,
hard, brave, and stubborn, rigorous in their virtues
and their vices, violent in their loves and hates,
tenacious alike of good and of evil." To counter-
balance their clear intelligence, greatheartedness,
quick imagination and eloquence they have serious
defects, " and especially a certain unrestfulness of
spirit, a nervous irritability which prevents them
from living in peace or comfort with themselves or
with others, a true Spanish failing, peculiarly attached
both of old and at the present day to that harsh, tur-
bulent, strongly original character of the race which
has never allowed us rest, but kept us perpetually at
strife, taking umbrage at our very shadows." . . .
" While there were infidels to fight, strongholds to de-
fend, vows to fulfil, or even when there were civil wars
and vigorous smuggling and bands of brigands," there

1 " La Voluntad." Barcelona. 1902 : " La intuicion de las cosas,
la vision rapida no falta, pero falta, en cambio, la co-ordinacion
reflexiva, el laboreo paciente, la voluntad."

2 " Alcala de los Zegries." Madrid. 1910.

24 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

was scope for the virtues and vices of a people " born
and bred for action and passionate deeds," " fashioned
in battle"; but "on the advent of the moderate
customs of modern times " they find themselves " out
of their natural atmosphere, idle, poor, disconcerted,
cramped." And this is the tragedy of Spain to-day
— a great-hearted people in the toils of civilization.
In Perez Galdos' " El Caballero Encantado," the
spirit of Spain thus addresses one of her sons : " The
capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that
you live exclusively the life of words, and the language
is so beautiful that the delight in the sweet sound of
it woos you to sleep. You speak too much; you
lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal
the poverty of your actions." x In an earlier book 2
Sefior Leon deplores the fashion prevailing in Spain
" to depreciate all that is Spanish, and to bestow
great praise on all that is foreign. A wave of moral
cowardice and utilitarian baseness is passing over
Spain." But Spanish character is not permanently
weakened nor shorn of its dignity and independence,
the eclipse is but temporary and, indeed, partial, not
affecting the humbler classes. The spirit of Spain
will revive, as in "El Caballero Encantado," when
it is being carried from the death-bed to the

1 Saints in other countries have carried their heads in their
hands, but there is a legend of a saint in Spain who, not content
to walk a league with his head under his arm, continued to talk
the while without ceasing. He was, no doubt "concealing the
poverty of his action," like Bertram dal Bornio, carrying his head
" a guisa di lanterna " in the Inferno.

2 " Comedia Sentimental." 1909.

SPANISH CHARACTER 25

grave,1 and may be aptly likened, as by Don Rafael
Altamira, to the waters of the Guadiana which, after
flowing for a space underground, return once more to
the surface.

II. — Vain Generalities.

" And indeed," wrote Pepys, " we do all naturally
love the Spanish and hate the French," and if, since
his day, we have learned to love the French, the
character of the Spanish has not ceased to attract
and interest Englishmen. Yet any attempt to
generalize concerning Spanish character would seem
a vain and foolish task, since Spain is the country of
Europe which has most stringently preserved its local
differences of race and language, and it is still true,
as in Ford's time, that " the rude agricultural
Gallician, the industrious manufacturing artisan of
Barcelona, the gay and voluptuous Andalucian, the
sly vindictive Valencian are as essentially different
from each other as so many distinct characters
at the same masquerade," and the Basque2 and
andaluz, for instance, are as far apart as Frenchman

1 One may apply to it the words of Santa Teresa —

" Tiene tan divinas mafias
Que en un tan acerbo trance
Sale triunfando del lance
Obrando grandes hazafias."

2 Ford considered the Basque to be as " proud as Lucifer and as
combustible as his matches," and there is a proverb, " En nave y
en castillo no mas que un Vizcaino." Cf. Camoes. Os Lusiadas :

A gente biscainha que carece

De polidas razoes e que as injurias

Muito mal dos estranhos compadece.

26 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and Spaniard. It is possible to take the various
ingredients, Castilian pride,1 Catalan thrift,2 Andalu-
sian imagination, Gallegan dullness,3 the grimness of
Navarre, the stubbornness of Aragon,4 Valencian or
Murcian cunning, and, tying them into a convenient
bundle, to speak of the Spanish as proud, thrifty, etc.,
or, in a more pessimistic key, as haughty, avaricious,
untruthful, stolid, cruel, obstinate, malicious. But,
though such a judgment is notoriously false, a few
qualities ma}' perhaps be attributed to the whole of
Spain as in some measure common to her various
peoples. Foremost among these qualities are indepen-
dence and personal dignity. The Spaniards are a
nation of individualists, each a law unto himself, and
they are thus as a nation frequently misunderstood and
their pride has not suffered them to correct errors con-
cerning them, while at the same time it would perhaps
be difficult to find in any other nation so great a

1 The Castilians, said King James I. of Aragon, are very haughty
and proud : de gran ufania e erguylhosos. In the Lusiads the
Castilian is " grande e raro."

2 The line of Dante is well known : " l'avara poverta di Cata-
logna." Napier speaks of " the Catalans, a fierce and constant race."

3 The Gallegan, " o Gallego cauto " and " sordidos Gallegos duro
bando," in Camoes, ever remains the butt of Spanish wit. The
inhabitants of the Montana are considered almost equally dense :
" El montanes para defender una necedad dice tres " and again
" From Burgos to the sea all is stupidity." The Asturian, of the
region between Galicia and the Montana has, rather, the reputation
of a business-like shrewdness, he is the Astur avarus of Martial and
Silius Italicus ; in return for his boast that he has never had any
infecting contact with the Moors, a proverb says : " El asturiano,
loco y vano, poco fiel y mal cristiano."

4 " Para cantar los navarros, para llorar los franceses, parapegar
cuatro tiros los mozos aragoneses."

SPANISH CHARACTER 27

number of individuals whom one may admire and
respect. The dramatist Don Jacinto Benavente has
said x that in Spain " each of us would like to be the
only great man in a nation of fools, the only honest
man in a tribe of knaves," and speaks of " our
unbridled individualism." No one is a more thorough
individualist than Don Pio Baroja, and the principal
character of his novel, Cesar 6 Nada, declares that
the Spanish, " as individualists require, more than
a democratic, federal organization, an iron military
discipline." "Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism
have in reality little root in our country. . . .
Moreover we admit no superiorities and do not
willingly accept king or president, priest or prophet."
It is this refractoriness which has made the Spanish
so hard a people to govern, and wrought permanent
mischief to their prosperity as a nation. They would
seem to have still to learn the true dignity of loyalty
and service. Every Spaniard, of however humble a
position, considers that he is well qualified to criticize
the measures of his rulers, and still more the fancied
measures that he chooses to attribute to them. Thus
in a Republic every citizen would believe himself to
be capable of conducting the affairs of the nation
better than the President, as Sancho was convinced
that he could govern his island as well or better than
any ; nevertheless Spaniards are inclined to acquiesce
in a firm unquestioned authority with a kind of
heroical submission, accepting its decisions as they
accept the inevitable decrees of fate, and for this
1 In " El Imparcial."

28 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

reason an old-established system of government, such
as the Monarchy, is infinitely the best suited to
the Spanish temperament. No doubt they would
prefer to have no system of government, if that
were possible, being restive and tumultuous under
restraint. On one occasion a Spanish chauffeur
while driving his mistress considered that he had
been insulted by a passer in the street and, leaving
mistress and motor, proceeded to punish the offender
till the police interfered.1 And if the Spanish find it
difficult to work harmoniously under the orders of
others, it is no easier for them to maintain a joint
authority ; they can never co-operate for long, their
political parties and commercial unions rapidly fall
asunder like the seeds of a pomegranate. Similarly
one may see at a glance of any Spanish crowd that it
is not a fused mass but a collection of units remaining
aloof and separate ; if the individual gains, the State
suffers, and Spanish politics sometimes have an air of
cramping angularities and crude ambitions. But this
individualism and independence has its nobler and
more pleasant side, for even in extreme poverty
and distress, dignity and an accompanying courtesy,
honesty, and sobriety,2 rarely desert the Spaniard.

1 It is true that he was a Spanish Basque and was merely repro-
ducing in modern dress the scene in " Don Quixote," in which the
Biscayan leaves his mistresses unprotected in their carriage and
fights in order to show that he is by birth a cdballe.ro.

- Drunkenness is especially rare in Spain. Their sobriety has
been made a reproach, as being based on laziness and lack of
initiative. The second half of their proverb : " Goza de tu poco
mientras busca mas el loco — Enjoy the little you have, and let the
fool seek more " is, indeed, as foolish as the first half is wise.

SPANISH CHARACTER 29

Each is king in his own house, be it miserable
attic or merely the space of sun that his shadow-
covers ; mientras en mi casa me estoy rey me soy.
The following dialogue bears intrinsic evidence of
its nationality, it could not belong to any country but
Spain : " Is your worship a thief ? " — " Yes, to serve
God and all good people." 1 Thus personal dignity
and individual pride may be said to be the dominant
notes of Spain. So the beggars in the street address
one another as Sir, sefwr, lord, and if you cannot give
them an alms for the good of your soul you must at
least give excuses — perdone Vd. por Dios. While we
admire this independence we cannot help seeing that
it is a false dignity, which prefers to starve, like one of
the characters in Perez Galdos' Fortunata y Jacinta,
because " mi dinidd y sinificancia no me premiten —
my dignity and importance do not allow me," to
accept employment. The fair outward show given
to garret poverty is pathetic, but it is liable to deceive
and to create distrust. Mme. d'Aulnoy remarked
that the Spanish "bear up under this Indigency
with such an air of gravity as would cheat one."

In Love's Labour's Lost Don Adriano de Armado
says to Moth that he is " ill at reckoning ; it fitteth
the spirit of a tapster," but to Moth's observation,
"You are a gentleman and a gamester, Sir," he
answers well-pleased, " I confess both ; they are both
the varnish of a complete man" (todo un hombre).

1 Of. the " altos pensamientos," of Quevedo's famous Pablos of
Segovia and his father, the barber-thief, and the latter's remark :
" Esto de ser ladron no es arte mecanica sino liberal" — the thief's
is no base mechanical trade, but a liberal profession.

30 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

The Spanish have ever shown themselves to be ill at
reckoning, they are careless of details and have
indeed an Oriental incuriousness of facts and figures ;
in no country is it more difficult to obtain accurate
returns or consecutive statistics. Against all drudgery
the Spanish temperament rebels * ; they act by
impulse, in disconnected moments without per-
sistency ; their concentration is of instants,2 without
consequence ; and it has been observed that " Spain
has developed her life and art by means of spiritual
convulsions." What is said in one of Perez Galdos'
novels3 of Narvaez might with truth be applied to
many Spaniards : " He has a great heart and a great
intelligence, but they manifest themselves only by
fits and starts, by impulses, por arranqwes." There
is plenty of intelligence among Spaniards but little
continuity of judgment ; no perseverance. They are
enthusiastic for a project and, their thoughts out-
running action, they see the matter begun, in
progress, finished, so that their very keenness
prevents accomplishment, and finally nothing is
done. Don Quixote, we remember, thought little
of the winning of a kingdom and cutting off a giant's
head : "all that I consider already done, que todo

1 " Drudgery they will do none at all." Sir R. Wynn, " A brief
relation of what was observed by the Prince's servants in their
journey into Spain." 1623.

2 They have that momentary isolated intensity which M. Anatole
France ascribes to men of action : "lis sont tout entiers dans le
moment qu'ils vivent et leur g6nie se ramasse sur un point. lis
se renouvellent sans cesse et ne se prolongent pas."

3 Episodios Nacionales. Narvaez. 1902.

SPANISH CHARACTER 31

esto doy ya por hecho" Or sometimes their intelli-
gence mars their labour and, not content with doing
a simple thing simply, they spoil it by being a little
too clever, or decide a matter too readily by a swift
judgment that may happen to be false. The Spanish
are a people of immense and abiding energy,1 but
their energy is often dormant or misdirected. Two
Spaniards in the twentieth century have been seen
to converse with so fierce an intensity that it
seemed over and over again in the course of a
protracted and loud discussion that they must come
from words to blows; and the matter in dispute,
conducted with a heat that would have exhausted less
energetic natures, was whether it was right or wrong
to expel the Moriscos from Spain at the beginning
of the seventeenth century. Yet it is not certain
that the Spanish can be called unpractical ; they are
often idle, indifferent, aloof from the events of daily
life, but when a matter truly interests them, they
would seem to be sufficiently shrewd and practical.
King James I. of Aragon aimed an accusation at
the Castilians which has often been applied to all
Spaniards: "You do nothing without extrava-
gance.2" But a fundamental ingredient of Spanish

1 Cf. Joseph Townsend. " A journey through Spain in the years
1786 and 1787," 3 vols. London. 1792 : " We must not imagine that
the Spaniards are naturally indolent ; they are remarkable for
activity, capable of strenuous exertions and patient of fatigue."
Another noteworthy judgment of the same author concerning the
Spaniards is that " Their ambition aims in everything at perfection,
and by seeking too much they often obtain too little."

2 "Non hi ha res al mon que vosaltres non faessetz exir de
mesura."

32 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

character is realism and clear vision; it is their
birthright of transparent subtle air and unclouded
skies. They are keen to detect all falseness and
hypocrisy, and display a shrewd insight into
character ; but their study has been ever of persons
rather than of books and things,1 so that they may
act extravagantly themselves even while they are the
first to see another's extravagance, keenly practical,
it may be said, in the affairs of others, strangely
abstract and improvident in their own. Their realism,
if it drives them by reaction into a barren love of
words and visions of impossible ideals, expresses
itself in a directness which is very characteristic
of all classes of Spaniards, in the pregnant brevity
of countless proverbs, in concentrated intensity at
a given moment, in humour and satire and a strong
love of ridicule. Their proverbs show a thriftiness and
practical good sense very different from the prudence
that enriches, but equally far removed from the
romantic view of Spaniards sometimes held by
foreigners. In noble lines Calderon has said of life
that it is "a shadow, a fantasy, and the greatest good
is of small worth, since all life is a dream and dreams
themselves a dream " : —

l que es la vida ? Un frenesi.
I que es la vida ? Una ilusi6n,

una sombra, una ficci6n,

y el mayor bien es pequefio,

que toda la vida es sueno

y los suefios sueno son;

1 «' La letra con sangre entra," is a sad proverb of the Spanish
and in the modern education of the printed page they are deficient.

SPANISH CHARACTER 33

but we may doubt whether the following lines of
Lope de Vega are not as truly Spanish in spirit : —

Nada me parece bien,
Todos me son importunos. —
I Teneis dineros ? — Ningunos. —
Pues procurad que os los den.

" I see no good in anything ; all men weary me.
— Have you money ? — None — Then see that you
get some given you." l An almost harsh flavour of
originality is found in Spanish humour, a sly and
malicious irony, a biting wit, full of gaiety and good-
humour, but of great force and directness. Their
courtesy is proverbial, and it is not simply a super-
ficial politeness, brittle as glass, but goes to the very
core of the man. A knowledge of Spain would seem
to show that the mere forms of politeness have no
little effect in maintaining the dignity of a nation.
The Spaniard, writing from his own house, speaks
of it as esta su casa, this your house, and to a
tradesman he will sign himself, " Your sure servant,
who kisses your hands" (S.S.S., Q.B.S.M. which
is shorter than the corresponding English, " Yours
faithfully"); mere forms, it will be said, but forms
that show the spirit and betray the lordly and
generous magnificence of the men who once ruled
the world, and of whom Bacon wrote: "I have

1 Cf . the sayings, Poderoso caballero es don Dinero ; Dadivas que-
brantanpenas ; Dineros son calidad, etc. Sancho goes to govern the
island of Barataria " with a very great desire to make money." The
tendency is still to hoard, rather than invest, as did Don Bernard
de Castil Blazo in Gil Bias, keeping 50,000 ducats in a chest in his
house.

C

34 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

marvelled sometimes at Spain, how they clasp and
contain so large dominions with so few natural
Spaniards." As a kind of magnificent disregard
of human life has earned for Spaniards the charge
of cruelty, so their attitude towards time has led
many to look upon them as lazy and utterly un-
businesslike.1 "The Spartans and Spaniards have
been noted to be of small dispatch," says Bacon,
and this procrastination and delay was as prominent
in the spacious times of Spain's greatness as at the
present day. We need but think of the endless
trailing procedure of Inquisition trials, or of books
waiting on the frontier for inspection with a man
hired to dust them once a month. In ordinary life
it is due perhaps rather to indifference and disdain
than to an innate sluggishness ; in official transactions
formalism, and the inability to co-operate with others
often bring matters to an intricate pass of papers,
from which there is no issue but by a patient and
slow unravelling. Even to-day a rigid centralization
carries the pettiest affair to Madrid for settlement,

1 Spaniards prefer to enjoy time as a gift sent by the gods, than
to waste it in trying to spend it too nicely. El tiempo lo da Dios ;
Dios mejora las horas ; Con el tiempomaduran las uvas. To a peasant
two o'clock on a day of March is " four more hours of sun." Time
is not parcelled out mechanically into tiny divisions by clocks.
Distances are given by hours— an hour to a league. The Catalans
are less lavish of the minutes ; to a stranger asking the distance to
a village near Tarragona, a peasant answered cannily in Catalan,
" un cuart y mitj " — that is, the village was a quarter of an hour
and half a quarter of an hour distant. Curiously the Catalans
give the hour as in German, e.g. half-past eight is dos cuarts de nou
— halb Neun.

SPANISH CHARACTER 35

and lays upon the Prime Minister a crushing load
of work. Etiquette is carried to excess, and there
are in Spain many " formal natures," men who would
perish upon a ceremony rather than come to a quick
and common-sense conclusion. But the true defect
of Spanish politics is that they have a tendency to
become abstract, with many excellent formulas and
catchwords, but divorced from reality, a kind of
up-to-date scholasticism. Sometimes they appear to
be a game of dialectics, carried on by a few skilful
players, sometimes a " rushing splendour of rhetoric,"
carrying away many. Spaniards are fond of what
Butler calls " that idle and not very innocent employ-
ment of forming imaginary models of the world and
schemes of governing it." Spanish politicians, says
Senor Perez Galdos, " live in a world of rituals and
formulas, recipes and expedients. The language has
filled with aphorisms and mottos and emblems. Ideas
become stereotyped, and contemplated actions go seek-
ing to embody themselves in words and cannot make
their choice of them." * It would seem indeed that
reality has shown itself so angular and hard-featured
to the Spanish that they gladly make efforts to escape
from it. While no nation shows so great a courage,

1 "ElCaballero encantado,"1909: "Vivert en un mundo de ritua-
lidades, de formulas, de tramites y recetas. El lenguaje se ha llenado
de aforismos, de lemas y emblemas ; las ideas salen plagadas de
motes, y cuando las acciones quieren producirse andan buscando la
palabra en que han de encarnarse y no acaban de elegir." The
Spaniards speak with conviction of the great gulf fixed between word
and deed : — del diclio al hecho hay gran treclio ; Los dichos en nos, los
hechos en Dios.

36 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

endurance and patient endeavour in misfortune and
defeat, they are not equally successful in success,
they are often spoilt by prosperity and become weak,
dissolute and frivolous ; they must have something
to fight, and fall when they no longer press against
opposition. This may account for the fact that the
poorer classes are still, as in Ford's time, "by no
means the worst portion of the population." The
peasants are courteous, intelligent, patient, energetic
and persevering : their praises have been sung by
many writers.1 But a pathetic fatalism and apathy
prevail, and a great bitterness against those in
authority. Pobreza nunca alza cabeza, poverty never
raises its head, they say, la cdrcel y la cuaresma
para los pobres es hecha, prison and Lent are for the
poor ; they look for no bettering of their lot, but for
pan y paciencia y muerte con penitencia — bread and
patience and death with repentance. But it must be
said that the fault is not only of those " on top," but
of those also who, brooking no superiorities of any
kind,2 thus reduce differences between man and
man to the brutal divisions of wealth and poverty
and make life a race for riches. It remains true,
however, that the peasants of Spain are ground
down by taxes,3 and work incessantly only to hover
on the fringes of starvation ; todo sea por Dios, they

1 Cf. a speaker in the Cortes in June, 1910 : " Aqui no hay nada
tan alto como las clases bajas."

2 Don Ramiro de Maeztu has written of the aggressive assertion
of personality — innecesdria afirmacidn de las personas — in Spain.

3 Lo que no lleva Cristo lo lleva el fisco — " What the Church
leaves, the Treasury receives," says an old proverb.

SPANISH CHARACTER 37

say, and content themselves with the observation
that honesty and riches do not fit into one sack —
honra y provecho no caben en un saco. There is a
certain elemental hardness in the Spanish which
helps them to support hardships stoically and, indeed,
to be scornful of modern comforts and luxury. Their
indifference towards disquiet and discomfort and
noisy uproar * often dismays the foreigner, but it
is not that they are inconsiderate of the feelings of
others, they have a deep sensitiveness and refine-
ment, but they have not been enervated and rendered
over- sensitive by a luxurious civilization. Their
climate, with its harsh extremes of cold and heat,2
produces a people like that of Leon's Alcatel de los
Zegries, " rigorous in their virtues and their vices,
violent in their loves and hates." They go easily
to extremes ; Spanish intellects are apt to be either
totally undeveloped, or else over-subtle in nice
distinctions, and action in the same way, when it
comes, comes with violence and excess, like the
rivers of Spain which, parched all summer, pour
down after rain in rushing torrents. The charges
of cruelty and fanaticism, the bull-fight and the

1 An author in Perez Galdos' Fortunata y Jacinta says that the
Spaniards, that picara raza, are unaware of the value of time and
of the value of silence. " You cannot make them understand that
to take possession of other people's silence is like stealing a coin.''
" It is a lack of civilization." By such un-Spanish criticisms
Senor Perez Galdos betrays the fact that he was not born in Spain.

2 The historian, Mariana, displayed more patriotism than
accuracy when he wrote that Spain " is not like Africa, which is
burnt by the violence of the sun nor is it assailed, as is France,
by winds and frosts and humidity of air and earth."

38 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

auto-de-fe, have fixed themselves upon the Spanish.
They are by nature inflexible and uncompromising,
and like to carry out their principles without looking
to the many delicate shades of grey between white
and black. But they are not by nature cruel ; they
support bodily sufferings with courage and inflict
them upon others as the lesser of two evils, burning
the heretics to prevent the spread of their heresy ;
and indeed to men convinced that these " pertinacious
schismaticks " were to burn for ever and ever in
another place, a touch of fire in this life could hardly
seem an excessive punishment.1 Cruelty to animals
on the roads of Spain is extremely rare, and at the
bull-fights 2 it is only fair to observe that, while the
foreigner's attention is directed to the sufferings of
the horses, the whole mind of the Spaniard is bent on
intricacies of the conflict between man and bull, and
nice passes which escape the foreigner.3 The autos-
de-fe and the Inquisition have cast over Spain a reputa-

1 So Fr. Alonso de Espina wrote that, were an Inquisition
established, " serian innurnerables los entregados al fuego, los cuales
si no fuesen aqui . . . cruelmente castigados . . . habran de ser
quemados en el fuego eterno." La Fortaleza de la Fe. 1459.

2 "This spectacle," says an admiring Englishman in 1760, "is
certainly one of the finest in the world, whether it is considered
merely as a coup-d'ceil or as an exertion of the bravery and infinite
agility of the performer."

3 Yet certainly no Englishman should attend a bull-fight while
the modern custom prevails of leading out a cruelly gored horse,
sewing it up, and bringing it in again for fresh sufferings. This is
done to save the contractors of the plaza a fewj, shillings and is a
disgrace to Spain. Those who have not [seen a bull-fight and can
scarcely believe that so sordid and outrageous a practice is possible
may, if they have the courage, read all the details in Sefior Blasco
Ib&fiez' novel Sangre y Arena (1908).

SPANISH CHARACTER 39

tion for fanaticism and obscurantist bigotry. But the
Spanish, while eager supporters of their faith, are too
independent to bow down for long to a Clerical predomi-
nance ; they cannot be called a priest-ridden nation.1
Nibuen fraile -por amigo, ni malo por enemigo, says
one of their proverbs — make no friend of a good monk,
nor enemy of a bad ; and again, Haz lo que dice el
fraile no lo que hace — follow the monk's precept, not
his example. They believe uncompromisingly in the
Roman Catholic religion, but have a ready eye for
the faults of its ministers ; 2 they love and reverence

1 The Inquisition was a tyranny universally feared, though in
principle supported by the people. In Pepys we read of " the
English and Dutch who have been sent for to work (in the manu-
facture of certain stuffs) being taken with a Psalm-book or Testament
and so clapped up and bhe house pulled down ; and the greatest
Lord in Spayne dare not say a word against it if the word Inquisi-
tion be mentioned." Cf. the groundless terror of the old woman in
Quevedo's El Buscdn, or the story of the man who, when asked for
a few pears by an Inquisitor, pulled up and presented him with the
whole tree.

2 Attacks on and ridicule of priests in Spain are not exclusively
modern ; the following verse of Juan Euiz (14th century) is but
one of countless instances throughout Spanish literature :

" Como quier que los frayles et clerigos disen que aman
a Dios servir
Si barruntan que el rico esta para morir
Quando oyen sus dineros que comienzan a retenir
Qual de ellos lo levara comienzan luego a rennir."

But recently the number of those believing in religion has
diminished, and the anti-Clericals have been driven by certain
abuses of the Church to a more or less crude parade of atheism.
It is felt that the Church has crushed life rather than sought its
fuller, nobler expression. Thus a writer, E. L. Andr6 (" Etica
Espafiola," 1910), says : "We conceive life solely as a preparation
for death," and speaks of the slight espiritu territorial possessed by

40 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

the Church as a refuge from reality, but continue
to be realists in their mysticism. The Church in
Spain has done noble work, but it has been a retreat
more than a morality, encouraging hollow shows
rather than love of truth,1 patience and submission
rather than enterprise and a persistent search for
remedies. The anti- Clericals complain that the
influence of the priest in the family is excessive,
but when the women are kept in a semi-Oriental
seclusion, while the men chatter together in street
and casino and cafe, as still happens in many parts
of Spain,2 it is but natural for the women to turn
from the discomfort and isolation of their homes to
the magnificent ceremonies of the Church.3 The
Spaniards are naturally inclined to generosity and
a love of magnificence, but, their poverty preventing,
this too often degenerates to shams and hollowness.
To poverty and the proud concealment of poverty,
much of the feeling of suspicion which prevails in
Spain may be attributed. A large number of
Spaniards may be said to be well-to-do in the street,

Spaniards/ Cf. Berceo, in the 13th century : " Quanto aquf vivimos
en ageno moramos" — our life on earth is a sojourn in a strange
land.

1 Honesty is a common attribute of Spaniards, but they have
perhaps no very accurate regard for the value of truthfulness or
honesty in words.

- La mujer y el fraile mal parecen en la calle. In the South, as
at Seville, the percentage of women to be seen in the streets is
noticeably small.

3 " El consejo de la mujer es poco," said Sancho, " y el que no lo
toma es loco." The women maintain their influence, but it is thus
not properly their own, but rather that of the Church.

SPANISH CHARACTER 41

poverty-stricken in the home. The family in Pereda's
Bocetos al temple which chooses without a moment's
hesitation to live on potatoes in order to be able to
dress luxuriously, is no solitary instance, and in
Madrid many live in bare rooms who drive abroad
in carriages. The Spanish are more careful of out-
ward show than any other nation. The universal
neatness and soldierly smartness of their dress must
excite admiration. But watch a poor man fold and
refold the brilliantly lined outer edge of his capa
that the more worn portions of the velvet may not
appear — the capa which may itself cover a multitude
of sins (la capa todo lo tapa) that recalls the passage
in Shakespeare : —

" Armado : The naked truth of it is I have no shirt. I go wool-
ward for penance.

Boyet: True, and it was enjoined him in Home for want of
linen."

Or follow a smart officer through the streets to his
house. The position and entrance of the house will
not prepare you for its decreasing splendour as you
climb stair after stair to the bare rooms where he
lives. There is much that is postizo, false and
artificial, in the exterior view, as Spaniards will
themselves bitterly confess. Appearances must be
maintained. So Bacon says that " It hath been an
opinion that the Frenchmen are wiser than they seem
and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are," and
many of their houses are built not to live in but to
look on. Hence, partly, a disquieting element of mis-
trust, of " suspicions that ever fly by twilight " foreign

42 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

to the frank and open nature of true Spaniards. " Of
every Spanish undertaking," writes Sen or Benavente
in 1909, " it may be said as of the famous Cortes that
it is ' dishonoured while yet unborn.' The result is
that he who is jealous of his good name shuns contact
with all business affairs like pitch, and the affairs
fall into the hands of men who are untroubled by
scruples. . . . All these suspicions and distrusts are
a sign rather of our poverty than of our morality.
There is so great a scarcity of money that it becomes
unintelligible that any one who has the handling of
it should fail to keep a part for himself. . . . We are,
moreover, so firmly attached to old-fashioned ideas of
nobility — rancias hidalguias — that, in spite of our
pressing need of money, we still consider its acquisi-
tion contemptible; so we prefer to seek it by sub-
terranean channels as if it were a crime to seek it in
the light of day."

Suspicion of new things has ever been at once the
strength and the weakness of Spain.1 In the nine-
teenth century this suspicion expressed itself in
patriotism carried to its extreme logical conclusion.
Were Napoleon's reforms of a nature to benefit Spain
in an inestimable degree ? To the Spaniard they
were the tyrannical and insidious measures of a

1 The phrase Seguir sin novedad is still used to imply that
everything is going on well. But an ever-increasing number of
politicians are now advocating " new things " with a somewhat crude
violence. It is a reaction against the apathy that waited with crossed
hands —

" Vuolsi cosl cola dove si puote
Cio che si vuole, e piu non dimandare."

SPANISH CHARACTER 43

usurper. Was his brother Joseph intelligent, well-
intentioned, conciliatory ? To the Spaniard he was
ever the squint-eyed drinker, Pepe Botellas, and it
was idle to insist that he did not squint, and did not
drink. Was King Amadeo an enlightened, courageous,
and self-effacing ruler ? To the Spaniard he was an
intruder, to be treated with neglect, insolence or
disdain. This distrust may have been foolish and
harmful to the interests of Spain, but it was in many
respects noble and admirable. To-day, however, we
have rather the reverse side of the picture, a pessi-
mism about all things Spanish, and a foolish tendency
to imitate things foreign. Beneath his outer capa
of haughty pride the Spaniard is keenly aware of his
limitations ; he has no confidence in his own actions
or in] his country, or, rather, his confidence is merely
momentary and is never sustained. It is, no doubt, a
sign not of progress but degeneracy to exchange the
Spanish capa, peculiarly suited to a climate of hot
sun and cold air, for English overcoats or the becom-
ing mantilla for the newest fashion in Parisian hats.
It is not necessarily a sign of progress to exchange
old-fashioned Spanish piety for the latest shades of
scepticism, or to leave the simple life of an hidalgo in
the provinces for the idler, dissipated life in the only
capital and court. The desire to be very modern is
at present a good thing in Spain, yet it need not
consist in casting aside old traditions and diffidently
rejecting Spanish customs that are excellent. This
exalting of foreign customs and depreciation of their
own which has been frequently observed of Spaniards,

44 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

is due rather to an inverted pride than to humility ;
at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was
considered a mark of culture in Spain to despise
things Spanish and to worship things French, but all
the time the Spanish believe at heart in themselves,1
they praise foreign countries with their lips, but
continue to place Spain first, and if they imitate,
they cast a peculiarly Iberian flavour over their
imitations. The late Bishop Creighton, looking at
Spain historically, remarked that it "leaves the
curious impression of a country which never did
anything original — now the Moors, now France, now
Italy, have influenced it." If this is so, certainly the
Moors, and France, and Italy have wrought some of
their most original works in Spain ; and it can hardly
be said that the great Spanish discoverers and con-
querors, painters, philosophers, and poets of the fif th-
teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were not
original, whether they were influenced by Moors,
Frenchmen, or Italians.2 But, indeed, the Spaniard
more readily repels than assimilates, it is his virtue
and his defect ; he remains isolated and alone, difficult
to convince, impossible to govern. New political and

1 Cf. the characteristic trait mentioned by Samuel Pepys : "They
will cry out against their King, and Commanders, and Generals,
none like them in the world, and yet will not hear a stranger say a
word of them but will cut his throat."

2 It is true, however, that the mass of the Spanish nation has
still to develop on really Spanish lines : hence its present weakness
and its potential strength in the future, when a civilization of a
truly national character shall have imposed itself upon the artificial
civilization of culture imported from France, and religion imported
from Rome.

SPANISH CHARACTER 45

social theories from France are spread in Spain, but
they there serve progress less than disquiet and the
rancour of those who have not towards those who
have. The reforms needed by Spain will not be
furthered by riots and disorder, and the demagogues
who encourage them are perhaps less patriotic than
they profess to be. For Spain needs peace, long periods
of tranquillity in whiclwto develop her resources
and to learn the more difficult task of maintaining in
prosperity that strength and independent nobility of
character which have shone out so clearly in misfor-
tune. The conclusion then, if so desultory a study
warrants a conclusion, is that the Spanish are a
fundamentally noble, courteous, and independent
people, energetic and brave, with a natural tendency
to grandeur and generosity, whom poverty often
leads to hollow display and the consequent suspicion
and distrust. They will be at immense pains to
" bear up under their indigency," but have a greater
consideration for the semblance than for the reality
and substance of well-being, for artificial show,
supported by infinite care and ^ingenuity, than for a
more solid prosperity, based on serious effort. Their
realism, throwing into relief the apparent pettiness of
daily life, causes them to dream dreams and weave
fragile abstract palaces of fair-sounding phrases ; they
have not that useful quality of accuracy, an under-
standing of the value and importance of details and
gradual effort, of pennies and minutes : they will
smite a stone in twain at a great blow, but the idea
that it might be pierced by drops of water saepe cadendo

46 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

is foreign to them, and often they aim at a million
and miss a unit. They are a nation of strongly
original characters, acting on impulses and inter-
mittently, and thinking in extremes ; often failing in
the face of prosperity, but proud, resolute, and patient
in misfortune; often magnificently imprudent, but
never despicable, except to those whose worship is of
riches and success ; an admirable but discomfortable
people, not adapting itself readily to modern con-
ditions, but ever to be reckoned with as an energetic,
vital force, not bowing permanently before defeat.

II

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN

IT was, of course, Samuel Johnson who said,
" There is a good deal of Spain that has not
been perambulated," and the remark still
holds good for those who, like Don Quixote,
wish to " go seeking adventures." The brigand stories,
" got up," as Ford would say, " for the home market,"
are now slightly exploded, and few travellers expect
to find at every turn —

" Cent coupe-jarrets a faces renegates
Coiff6s de montSras et chausses d'alpargates."

Yet even to-day few foreigners realize that they
may cross and recfT)ss the Peninsula from north to
south and from east to west in perfect security. They
will meet with no cloak-and-sword episodes; their
adventures must be of another order. It is true that
the Spaniard can use his knife, but the knife comes
into play in quarrels of cards and love and jealousy,
in which the passing traveller can have no part.
Those, however, who measure culture by comfort, and
wish to journey as consistent first-class passengers

48 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

through life, should certainly narrow their Spanish
travels to the round of a few cities —

"Erret et extremos scrutetur alter Iberos,"

and, however rapid and conventional, a journey that
includes the Alhambra, the Mosque of Cordoba, the
Cathedrals of Seville, Toledo, and Burgos,1 and the
picture-galleries of Seville and Madrid, can scarcely
be said to have been in vain. But to know Spain and
the Spaniards it is necessary to go further afield, to
the small towns and villages of Andalucia and Cas-
tille, for here, rather than in the larger towns, is to be
found the true spirit of the race. Some five thousand
villages are still to be reached only by bridle-paths,
and in these there has been little change since Cer-
vantes went his rounds collecting taxes ; so that for
those who care to leave the beaten track there still
remain many unexplored districts, and much first-
hand knowledge to glean of the country and its
inhabitants. To many, no doubt, Spain is the country
of dance and song and sun-burnt mirth, of the flutter
of fans and the flash of dark eyes ; the country of the
bull-fight and the white mantilla and carnations in
the hair ; of Roman ruins and Moorish palaces set in
groves of myrtle and orange ; of —

" Cloaked shapes, the twanging of guitars,
A rush of feet and rapiers clashing,
Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand Hashing."

and if any shadows fall across the picture they are

1 The ethereally lovely Cathedral of Leon is more remote.

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN 49

those of the brigand and the priest-inquisitor. Then
comes the inevitable reaction. Those who visit Spain
find that it is for them indeed un pays de Vimprevu.
The former image in their mind soon perishes, and
they cry out upon this " ciel insalubre," this —

" pays endiable ;
Nous y mangions, au lieu de farine de ble',
Des rats et des souris et pour toutes ribotes
Nous avons deVore' beaucoup de vieilles bottes."

But, to judge from many books published about
Spain, most European countries would seem to have
entered into a league to look upon the Peninsula
solely as a land of a poetical unreality, its inhabitants
divided into inquisitors, monks, brigands, and con-
spirators, lending —

" the colour of romance
To every trivial circumstance."

A well-balanced and accurate account of the country
is singularly rare. It is true that in some respects
Spain has changed little since the sixteenth century,
but, on the other hand, during the twentieth century,
while she has been making laborious progress, foreign
ideas of Spain have remained stationary, with the
prejudices and fixed opinions of fifty years ago. No
error or exaggeration concerning Spain is too ridicu-
lous to be affirmed and readily believed, and those
who take no thought to study the Peninsula in quiet
days save as a land of vague romance, when trouble
occurs are officious with wise criticisms and stern
common-sense, based on ignorance. Quite recently
the hysterical visions of prisoners tortured in Spanish

D

50 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

dungeons, and of priestly cruelty and greed, might
persuade one that Mr. Kipling's " Little Foxes " was
written not before, but after, the events of 1909 in
Spain. One forgets that it is of Ethiopia, not Spain,
that Mr. Lethabie Groombride, M.P., exclaims, " What
callous oppression ! The dark places of the earth are
full of cruelty ! " Like the natives of Ethiopia, the
courteous Spaniards are " much pleased at your con-
descensions ; " but they too have a sense of humour,
and note with amusement the ignorance of nations
which declare that Spain's chief need is more educa-
tion and culture.

For the traveller who wishes to explore the remote
parts of Spain, and to escape from Spanish trains,
the simplest method is to proceed on horseback.
Walking and bicycling and motoring are possible in
the North, and especially in the Basque Provinces,
where the inns are good and the roads excellent.
But in most parts of Spain they are practically impos-
sible ; the roads are too stony or too dusty even for
walking, and, moreover, in fifty kilometres you may
find hardly one inn. There remains the diligencia
— coche, tartana, diabla, call it what you will — but a
single experience of it will probably be sufficient.
It rolls and lurches heavily to the loud, continuous
shouting of the driver to his horses : Caballo-allo-
allo-allo, Mula-ula-ula-ula. The traveller, if he has
the misfortune to be in the interior, is beaten against
the wooden sides, the windows rattle, the bells jingle,
the vehicle sways slowly on its way, groaning and
complaining of the breadth, as well as the length, of

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN 51

the road1 — nosotros tambien llegaremos,si Dios qwiere,
as a driver said when passed by more rapid travellers,
"if it is the will of Heaven." Occasionally at a
country railway station may be seen a boy who is a
pillar of dust or mud. He is the zagal of the dili-
gencia, who runs by its side through dirt and mire,
urging on the horses, or stands to rest on the step at
the back. Sometimes the diligencia descends into
river-beds, usually dry ; and after much rain it is apt
to stay there, and darkness falls and the frogs croak
mockingly, while more mules are fetched to help in
the work of extrication. Often it proceeds by night,
throwing strange, fantastic shadows in the narrow
streets of sleeping villages. The driver must undergo
not only extremes of heat and cold, but is often in
danger of snowdrifts and swollen torrents and rocks
from the hill-sides. A Navarrese innkeeper, an old
soldier of Santa Cruz, introduced a driver of a dili-
gencia as "the bravest man of my acquaintance."
Spanish travellers accept all these discomforts with a
marvellous, fatalistic resignation and equanimity ; but

1 Some of the secondary roads of Andalucfa are excellent, and
motorable, though narrow. But between the roads of most pro-
vinces there is little to choose. No wonder that there is in Spain
a saint invoked as the protector of " way-farers and the dying."
Ford remarked that while the rest of Spain calls the Milky Way
" the road to Santiago," the Gallegans themselves know better, and
call it " the road to Jerusalem." The roads from small towns to
their stations, at charge of the municipios, are notably bad, and
amaze the newly arrived foreigner. But, indeed, the roads in the
immediate neighbourhood of such important industrial cities as
Valencia and Barcelona are often in a deplorable state, and it is no
infrequent sight to see carts of fruit or vegetables stuck fast in deep
ruts of mud.

52 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

even a pedestrian will go further and fare better in
an afternoon than a traveller in diligencia during a
whole day. Still, as a unique experience, a dili-
gencia drive must be undertaken ; and the driver is
good company, sparing time from the loud praise and
blame meted out to his mules to bestow pithy com-
ments on the living and the dead —

" The crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn."

The inns, mesones, ventorrillos, ventas, posadas,
paradores, are still much the same as in the times of
Cervantes, moderately clean, immoderately uncomfort-
able, bare alike of furniture and food.1 Still to your
first inquiry the answer is, " Hay de todo, we have
everything," still to your further inquiry the
abstract todo shrinks to nada. But for an under-
standing of the Spanish people, nothing is more
interesting and one may add, more pleasant than to
listen to their talk as they sit round some great inn
fire of crackling scented twigs burning on the stone
floor of the court and kitchen. The discomfort and
hardships of travel in remote parts of Spain are
repaid in flowing measure. Here a solitary peasant

1 Ticknor, in 1818, speaks of Spain as " a country such as this
where all comfortable or decent modes of travelling fail," of the
" abominable roads," and of the inns as " miserable hovels,"
destitute of provisions. A century and a half earlier Mine, d' Aulnoy
said : " You enter not any inn to dine but carry your provisions
with you." But the centuries pass not for Spanish inns.

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN 53

is seen ploughing land so precipitous and steep that
the stones rattle down as he advances ; there the
mules stand hour by hour at the plough while the
peasants — in this case servants on some great estate
— play cards, the large earthenware botijos of water
standing ready to their hand ; or a group of workers
in the fields stand shivering in early morning round
a great common puchero, dipping their spoons in
turn, and in turn raising the bota high above their
heads to drink; or one has a glimpse of some
peasant's dress 1 of brilliant colouring, of some
ancient vanishing costume of leather or velvet, silk
embroidery or silver buttons — at every turn some
quaint custom, some curious picturesque scene and
colour appears, and the talk of the peasants is a
delight. The two most successful English travellers
in Spain were beyond doubt, Ford and Borrow.
They won the respect of all classes of Spaniards,
and saw practically the whole of Spanish life three-
quarters of a century ago. Borrow describes himself
on one occasion as " dressed in the fashion of the
peasants of the neighbourhood of Segovia in Old
Castile, namely, I had on my head a species of
leather helmet or montera, with a jacket and
trousers of the same material." And Ford says:
"In all out-of-the-way districts the traveller may
adopt the national costume of the road, to wit, the

1 A peasant woman near Almeria wore a long yellow and pink
kerchief, a bright red shawl, light blue bodice, skirt of white and
mauve, dark blue apron with a white line, red stockings, yellow
sandals, and carried a second shawl of brilliant orange colour, yet
all blent harmoniously under the glaring sunlight.

54 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

peaked hat {sombrero gaclio), the jacket of fur

(zamarra)" But without the peaked hat, now

almost extinct, or Borrow's leathern helmet, a few

changes of dress and especially what Ford calls "a

graceful and sleeveless Castilian manta" or rather

capa, excellently suited to the climate, will bring

many advantages. For to the ordinary traveller,

with red book and camera, the Spaniard will hardly

disclose his true nature, and remains an impenetrable

mystery; not that the foreigner often realizes the

existence of the unsolved riddle, the Spaniard

presenting a sufficient number of striking aspects

to make a swift superficial impression. The best

guides to Spain are still Ford's " Gatherings," and

a thorough acquaintance with "Don Quixote," a

fluent knowledge of Spanish, and, lastly, the advice

of Spaniards, since as Sancho sagely observed, "mas

sabe el necio en su casa que el cuerdo en casa ajena."

The traveller in Spain may in the heat of summer

listen to the silver plashing of fountains in marble

patios, and feel the coolness of snowy Sierras ; he may

in early morning gather frozen oranges to be eaten

later beneath a burning sun ; but it is this sun which

with the cold winds tends to limit his wanderings

to a brief period of spring or autumn. Martial

indeed says —

" Aestus serenos aureo f ranges Tago
Obscurus umbris arborurn."

but under the fierce Castilian sun — and there are
said to be 3600 hours of sunshine in the year — the
imagination produces no golden tints in the Tagus,

TRAVELLING IN SPAIN 55

and trees are few. Comfort the traveller will scarcely
find, but serviceableness and courtesy on all sides. If
he is wise, he will, however, imitate the Spaniards not
only a little in their dress, but greatly in their man-
ners. He will arm himself with an inalienable fund
of patience. He will be courteous even while chafing
at delay. His courtesy will never go unanswered.
" La cortesia tenerla con quien la tenga, Courtesy to
him who has it," as one of Calderon's characters says.
Money often obtains much, but the offer of a cigarette
or a cigar is often not less effective. Without a
courteous manner the money will be treated as an
insult and the cigar refused. Calderon says again :
" El sombrero y el dinero son los que hacen amigos,
Raising the hat and money make most friends." Few
peoples respect themselves more than the Spanish,
and they look for respect from others. " The sensitive
Spaniard bristles up like a porcupine against the
suspicion of a disdain." They do not forget that
they were once the greatest people in Europe, and
they regard it as an accident that the march of
modern civilization has left them behind, being,
indeed, too mechanical for their pride to adopt. And
still the golden rule for the traveller in Spain is
never to be in a hurry or never to show that he
is in a hurry, for by doing so he will increase
delays and defeat his object. He must learn the
Spanish proverb thoroughly — Paciencia y barajar,
" Patience, and shuffle the cards." Patience and cour-
tesy he will find to be above rubies. The Spaniard, so
sensitive and excitable, remains unmoved by delays

56 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and petty official tyrannies which drive an English-
man into a kind of despair and fury of impatience.1
But the lower officials in Spain are apt to be ignorant
and self-important, very official, and curt inquiries
only remind them that they represent the whole
majesty of the Law and the State; they multiply
their shrugs and inscrutable No se puede'%. On the
other hand, a polite speech, though it occupy several
of the few minutes that the traveller may have to
spare, is in Spain time well spent and performs
miracles ; — if, that is, he still persists in considering
the value of time, and has not found it simpler to
accept the less accurate methods of the Spaniard.
For he may ask in a cathedral, " When is Mass
going to be celebrated ? " and the answer is, " No se,
Seftor ; Cuanclo vengan los canonigos" — when it is
the good pleasure of the Canons to appear; or he
may ask in a station, " When does the train start ? "
and must not be surprised if the answer is again,
"No se, SeHor." He had best content himself once
and for all to breakfast at five-o'clock tea, and will
find consolation in the thought that here at least there
is no unseemly rush and strain, in this original and ex-
quisite land of To-morrow — Manama por la manana.

1 Especially in the matter of letters, the ignorance, indifference,
errors, and delays of the officials are, to an Englishman, past belief,
and not least so at Madrid, where a letter has been kept for two
months and handed over, after repeated inquiries, with the date of
the Madrid post-mark, seventy days earlier, clearly visible. Eeforms
are, however, in contemplation. Foreign letters as a rule fare better
than others. A card posted at Granada on May 15, and a letter
posted in France on May 26, both arrived at Barcelona on May 27
(1911).

Ill

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER

THE Bidasoa, in the last part of its course,
divides Spain from France. It further
divides Basque from Basque. It has
thus a local and an historic interest.
It is the scene of smuggling between French and
Spanish Basques and, as a frontier river, it has seen
many a quaint and solemn episode in the past — the
passage of Wellington's troops, for instance, in 1813,
or the exchange in boats of Francis I. against two
hostages (his sons) in 1526, the King showing an
eager haste to win across the river and reach the
friendly inhabitants of St. Jean de Luz1 and the
sheltering walls of Bayonne. But it is the passing
beauty of the whole Bidasoa valley that attracts the
visitor, the loveliness of the river and the hills and
the villages by the river. The Bidasoa is beautiful

1 The former importance of St. Jean de Luz (in Basque Doni-
bane Lohitzune) is shown by the lines —

" Saint Jean de Luz, petit Paris
Bayonne, son ecurie."
Similar is the proud boast of Almeria :

" Cuando Almeria era Almeria
Granada era su alqueria."
Victor Hugo quaintly describes St. Jean de Luz in 1843 as " un
village cahote dans les anfractuosites de la montagne."

58 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

during its whole course from where it rises near the
village of Maya, a little mountain stream running
swiftly through woods of oak and chestnut. At
times the hills break abruptly down, the water lies
deep and dark-green beneath, and there is a look of
Ullswater about both hills and river. A little above
Endarlaza the road leaves the river, and from here
may be had a glimpse of the Bidasoa of unrivalled
beauty. For it runs in a long, irregular stretch,
irregular for the rouo;h backbones of hill covered
with boulders and bushes of box. At each hill-ridge
one might expect the river to bend and vanish, but
still it appears beyond. Nearer the village of Vera
it contracts to a narrower flow, and the water lashes
over rocks, magnificently white and green. The
river is known to fishermen as well as to smugglers
and Carlists and lovers of Nature. Certainly the
wisest travellers, before passing on to the bleak
uplands of Castille, will stay to explore this little
strip of green country, with its fresh woods and
valleys and villages full of state and ancientry. Vera,
in a sunny hollow, has an especial fascination. The
vine-covered balconies and projecting roofs keep the
houses in shade, and on two sides is the rustle and
flow of water. The houses stand on different levels,
several storeys of them mounting roof above roof
from the river to the church. They are curious in
their sculptured stone, their quaint carved buttresses,
their nail-studded doors or rounded arches leading to
the outer court, their crazy wooden balconies, their
coats-of-arms, their inscriptions. At the very entrance

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER 59

of the Bidasoa stands Fuenterrabia, beneath gently
sloping Jaizquibel. It is a little town of marvellous,
narrow streets, steep and crooked, and overjutting
houses carved in wood and stone. In front is a little
bay, black with fishing-boats, and seen from across
the water, Fuenterrabia's clustered group of houses,
yellow and brown and grey, crowned by the ancient
church and tenth-century castle, is of a rare and en-
chanting beauty. Not only a narrow strip of river,
but several centuries separate it from Hendaye oppo-
site, with its shore on the Bidasoa and its shore on
the sea, and its woods above the river, crowded in
spring with daffodils. The sudden change from every-
thing that is French to everything that is Spanish
cannot but be surprising. It is due, no doubt, to the
fact that beneath the French and the Spanish civiliza-
tion and language, the people have an older language
and civilization common to either side. The Basque
spoken varies but little, being merely a little broader
in Spain than in France. Mme. d'Aulnoy noticed the
abrupt change wrought by a few yards of travel. " It's
certain, as soon as I past the little river of Bidassoa, I
was not understood unless I spake Castilian ; and not
above a quarter of an Hour before I should not have
been understood had I not spoke French." x Obstacles
and delays begin : " Here are Toll-gatherers who make
you pay for everything you carry with you, not ex-
cepting your Cloaths. This Tax is demanded at their
Pleasure and is excessive on Strangers." Letters are
no longer received in a well-ordered service : " There
1 English translation of 1692.

CO THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

is in this country a very ill order touching commerce,
and when the French carrier arrives at St. Sebastian,
all the letters he brings are deliver'd to others who
are good footmen and ease one another. They put
their packets into a sack tied with rotten cords to
their shoulder, by which means it oft happens that
the secrets of your heart and family are open to the
first curious body who makes drunk the Footpost."
Mme. d'Aulnoy is irritated by the unintelligibility
of Basque : " This country called Biscaye is full of
high mountains where are several iron mines.1 The
Biscays climb up the rocks as easily and with as
great swiftness as stags. Their language (if one may
call such jargon language) is very poor, seeing one
word signifies abundance of things. There are none
but those born in the country that can understand
it; and I am told that to the end it may be more
particularly theirs they make no use of it in writing :
they make their children learn to read and write
French and Spanish according to which King's
subjects they are." " They are said to understand
one another," said Scaliger of the Basques, " but, for
my part, I doubt it." The most famous scene of peace
witnessed by the Bidasoa was the meeting held in the
lie des Faisans, or de la Conference, a narrow island,
now worn to a mere strip by the flow of the tide,
between Philip IV. of Spain and Louis XIV. of
France in 1660. It was a scene of lavish splendour
and magnificence, and Velazquez, then in the last year
of his life, superintended the decorations and assisted
1 In 1623 Sir R. Wynn describes the country near " Bilbo " as " all
infinite Rocky, cover'd onely with Furrs and a few Juniper Trees."

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER 61

at the interview.1 But most often we hear of the
Bidasoa as a scene of strife and anxiety, escape and
pursuit. The very river was an object of dispute
between the Governments of France and Spain, until
it was decided that the one half of it belonged to
France, the other to Spain; in the centre of the
bridge of Behobie is the dividing line, marked in
blue for France and red for Spain. Many a time has
the sight of its waters, flowing swiftly to the sea,
been welcomed by men in danger of life and liberty.
Colonel Peroz 2 has graphically described his escape
by swimming the river during the last Carlist war.
On May 5, 1808, Marbot reached the Bidasoa, after
riding day and night through hostile country to bring
the Emperor (then at the Chateau de Marrac, near
Bayonne) news of the Dos de Mayo rising at Madrid.
At the beginning of November Napoleon himself
crossed the frontier, and as he rode rapidly along the
route cVEspagne and beneath the Church of Urrugne,
with its ancient, sad inscription,3 little thought that
the enterprise upon which he was now engaged was
to be a main cause in bringing him swiftly to the
last hour that kills.

In the Middle Ages the pilgrims to the shrine
of Santiago went through the Basque country and
across the frontier in fear of their lives. The

1 At St. Jean de Luz, where Louis XIV. was married to the
Infanta, a house still bears the inscription —

" L'Infante je recus l'an mil six cent soixante
On m'appelle depuis le Chasteau de l'lnfante."

2 " Par Vocation." Paris. 1905.

3 " Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat. — All hours wound, the last
kills."

62 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Basques were fierce and brave, and fond of plunder.
In 1120 a Bishop was obliged to lay aside his
episcopal robes, and taking with him only two ser-
vants and a guide who understood the " barbarous
tongue of the Basques," so passed through to Com-
postella. In later times the pilgrims would sing, as
they left Irun, —

" Adieu la France jolie
Et les nobles fleurs de lys
Car je m'en vais en Espagne,
C'est un etrange pays,"

and would look back with sighs to the good cheer of
France :

" Quand nous fiirnes a Saint Jean de Luz '
Les biens de Dieu en abondance,
Car ce sont gens de Dieu elus,
Des charites ont souvenance."

The older way into Spain was the Roman road from
Dax to S. Jean Pied de Port and Roncesvalles — where,
indeed, and not " by Fontarabia," Charlemagne was
attacked by the Basques ; 2 but often this road was

1 Cf. Mme. d'Aulnoy : " We were here very well entertain'd so
that our Tables were covered with all sorts of Wild Fowls."

2 The Basque poem, " Altabiscarraco Kantua" singing of vic-
tory, was considered magnificent when it was thought to be centuries
old, and though it has been proved beyond all doubt to be modern,
we may still venture to consider it to be magnificent : " A cry is
heard among the Basque mountains, and the Etchecojauna, stand-
ing before his door, listens and says : " What is it ? who is there ? "
and the dog asleep at his master's feet, rises and fills the region of
Altabiscar with his barking." One line is, " Cer nahi zuten gure
menditarik Norteko gizcm horiek ? — What do these men of the North
want in our mountains ? " and another, " Why have they come to
disturb our peace ? " The Basques must often have asked a like
question as they have seen the foreigners of younger races crowd
around their mountains ; but in spite of these inroads, the Basques

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER 63

rendered impassable by war. In the middle of the
12th century the French Basque country passed,
with the rest of Aquitaine, into the possession of
the English Crown, and henceforth many were the
battles and frontier raids between the Basques on
either side. In 1296 we read of a truce in the
quarrels between San Sebastian and " Fuent Arrabia,"
and of an agreement made between them not to " send
or take bread, or wine, or meat, or arms or horses,
or other merchandise to Bayonne, or England, or
Flanders while the war lasts between the King of
France and the King of England." On July 19,
1311, a peace is made between Bayonne and Biarritz
(Beiarritz) on the one hand, and Laredo, Castro-
Urdiales, and Santander on the other. A few years
later we find the King of Castille writing to the
King of England to complain of the seizure of the
goods of his vassals of Biscay by the Seneschal of
Aquitaine, " against all right and reason." As often
before and after " en ce temps avoit grand rancune
entre le roy d'Angleterre et les Espagnols." In 1352
a treaty is formed between " England and the people
of the coast of Cantabria," who were famous for their
prowess in catching whales, as well as in frontier
warfare, and came into rivalry with English fisher-
men. In 1482 " amicable intelligences " are concluded
at Westminster between " Edward, by the Grace of
God King of England and France and Lord of

have succeeded in keeping a part of their language and customs,
like the waters of their proverb which, after a thousand years, still
run in their old course : Mila tcrtlie igaro eta ura here bidean — Des-
puts de afios mil, vuclve el rio a su cubil."

64 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Ireland " and " the inhabitants of the noble and
loyal Province of Guipuzcoa." l During the 17th
century the frontier raids continued, and in 1G36
(as before in 1558) the town of St. Jean de Luz was
taken and pillaged by the Spaniards. Up in the
hills, near the little village of Sare, the Spaniards
of Vera were defeated, and Sare still displays on the
walls of its mairie the coat-of-arms given by Louis
XIV. after the victory won by the bravery of
its inhabitants, with the following inscription in
Basque : — " Reward of courage and loyalty, given
to Sare by Louis XIV. in 1693." 2 In the Peninsular
War, Sare and its mountain, La Rhune, played a
prominent part, and many a vivid description, such
as the following, occurs in Napier : — " Day had broken
with great splendour, and three guns were fired as
signal of attack from Atchuria. The French were
driven from La Rhune, Sare was carried, and the
enemy brushed away from Ainhoa and Urdax : " It
was now eight o'clock, and from the smaller Rhune 3
1 Rymer, " Foedera."

2 S A E A B I
BALHOBEA
EENETALE
YALTASSDN
AEEN SAEIA
EMANA LUIS

xiv. 1693.
The words balhorea (valour) and Icyaltassuna (loyalty) are typical
of the absence of truly Basque abstract words.

3 The mountain La Rhune or Larrhun, is half in France, half
in Spain. Its name is Basque, derived from larre, pasture, and cm,
good (in Navarre there is a river Larron and a village Larraona) ;
but the first syllable has become the French article, and a lower
flank of the mountain is known as "La petite Rhune."

ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER 65

a splendid spectacle of war opened upon the view.
On the left the ships of war, slowly sailing to and
fro, were exchanging shots with the fort of Socoa,
and Hope, menacing all the French lines on the low
ground, sent the sound of a hundred pieces of
artillery bellowing up the rocks, to be answered by
nearly as many from the tops of the mountains. On
the right the summit of the great Atchuria1 was
just lighted by the rising sun, and fifty thousand
men rushing down its enormous slopes with ringing
shouts seemed to chase the receding shadows into
the deep valley." The description of the passage of
the Bidasoa in October, 1813, is equally graphic :
" From San Marcial seven columns could now be
seen at once, moving on a line of five miles, those
above bridge plunging at once into the fiery contest,
those below appearing in the distance like huge,
sullen snakes winding over the heavy sands." The
mountainous character of the frontier, causing Spain
to be entered by one or two narrow passages, has
indeed concentrated upon a few points a picturesque
variety of traffic through the centuries — a historical
pageant of soldiers, pilgrims, smugglers, Kings and
Queens dethroned or released from imprisonment,
wily agents, gorgeous ambassadors, fugitive politicians,
exiled Jesuits, heretic missionaries, Carlist conspira-
tors, with a large sprinkling of visitors and adventurers
from many lands.

1 Napier, who had no gift of spelling, writes Atchuria, or Atchu-
bia. The word means White Rock (aitz, rock, and churi, white)
and its Spanish name is Pefia Plata, Silver Mountain.

E

IV
ESKUAL-ERRIA

I. — Basque Country

THERE are few peoples more deserving of
study than the Basques, and few coun-
tries more pleasant to visit and to live
in than the Basque Provinces. After
the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and
the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the vil-
lages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to
quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, " all in the
peace of prayer," are a delightful contrast. The sky
has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and
everywhere is a softness of outlines ; everywhere,
too, is green — the green of chestnut and oak, of
maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The
maize is the principal crop of the year, providing the
heavy, yellow bread, artoa, as well as food for the
oxen and material for mats, mattresses, and even
cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of
stone, and in the mists of the early mornings the
Angelus rings from hidden towers; and the only

ESKUAL-ERRIA 67

other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched
grass or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble,
ancient family, and the Basque farmhouse, with its
wooden facade and carved projecting buttresses, its
wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed
down from father to son without change. It stands
surrounded by orchards and fields of maize, and often
overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a group of
splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one
side till it nearly reaches the ground. The lower
part of the front is hollowed into a court, and on one
side of this a door leads straight into the spacious
kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of
scoured bronze and copper, which forms the principal
room of the house. A dark, narrow staircase leads to
the bedrooms ; through the cracks of the floors may
often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Lar^e
chests of oak, some of them beautifully carved, are to
be found in most Basque farms. In Vizcaya a large
vine-trellis, running forward on posts from the inner
court beneath the balcony, further deepens the dark
velvet spaces in the whitewashed front of the farm ;
in Guipuzcoa many houses have no balcony or trellis,
but are overgrown with heavy vines, that often
entirely cover all the windows. From the windows
hang long strings of red piments or white onions ;
above the door there is frequently an ancient stone
coat-of-arms or an inscription with the name of the
founders and the date, and above this a cross or the
letters I . H . S. The house is thus half sacred. After
the father's death, the eldest son becomes " Lord of

68 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

the house, etcheco-jauna," while the younger sons
often emigrate.

It was from their farms, so dear to them, that the
Basques formerly took their names, so that they are
called not Smith or Collier, but At-the-head-of-the-hill
(Mendiburu) or Under-the-new-road (Bideberripe).
Even now a Basque in the country is never called by
his surname, but either by his Christian name or a
nickname, or the name of his house or property.
Etche (" house ") is perhaps the commonest compound.
Etcheberri ("newhouse") has numerous variants —
Echeverri, Echevarri, Echavarri (in Vizcaya and
Alava, where the Basque spoken is broader than in
Guipuzcoa, new is " barri "), Chavarri, Echarri, Echave,
Xavier, Javer, etc. The number of Basque-speaking
people can now but little exceed half a million, and
only very rarely is a Basque found who is unable to
speak Spanish or French.1 Of the three Spanish-
Basque provinces, Guipuzcoa (capital San Sebastian)
alone is entirely Basque. At Bilbao, the capital of
Vizcaya, no Basque is spoken ; and long before reach-
ing Vitoria, the capital of Alava, the language spoken
is Castilian. Nor is Basque spoken at Pamplona, the
capital of Navarre, though it reaches almost to its
walls, and till quite recently had a wider extension in
Navarre, names of places such as Mendigorria (" red
mountain") surviving. The difficulty of the lan-
guage has been somewhat exaggerated ; there is a
well-known story that the Devil spent three years in

1 The badness of their French has been ridiculed in the proverb,
" Parler francais comme une vache (i.e. Basque) espagnole."

ESKUAL-ERRIA 69

the Basque country, and only succeeded in learning
two words: Bai, "yes;" and JEs, "no." But it
remains true that the immense and complicated sys-
tem of Basque conjugations is for a foreigner almost
impossible to master ; and at the same time the Basque
literature to reward the learner is of the scantiest.
Interesting indeed are the proverbs, some of the
songs, and the pastorales, which have been compared
in more than one particular with the Greek drama,
but which are now acted only in the province of
Soule. The stage, in the open air, is formed of plain
planks, supported most often on barrels. A curtain
cuts off a part for the actors to change their costumes,
the same person often taking several parts in a play.
The curtain has two doors, one for the good and one
for the wicked. The good and the wicked are kept
strictly separate. The pastorale is always in honour
of Christianity and the Roman Catholic religion, and
the wicked are the heathen, the Turks, the English,
etc. Red is the colour of the wicked, that of the good
is blue ; in this respect no change is ever made. The
good always walk slowly and solemnly, but when the
wicked come on the stage the music is immediately
changed to a lively air, and they never remain long
quiet, their movements continuing quick and agi-
tated. The acting is very simple ; a journey, for
instance, is represented by walking up and down the
stage several times. The characters are usually taken
exclusively by men and boys, but there are a few
pastorales acted by women only ; the sexes are never
mingled. Strange and amusing anachronisms abound.

70 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

In the pastorale entitled Abraham, Abraham appears
in high boots and felt hat ; Sarah in a modern,
bright-coloured dress, with hat, veil, and fan; Isaac
carries one or two sticks on his shoulder for the
sacrifice ; the Angel is a little boy in white. Then
there are the heathen and the Christian kings, the
former dressed in red, with high crowns arrayed with
plumes and ribbons, the latter in blue with crowns of
gold. In the middle of the play one of the Christian
kings leaves the stage, and presently appears above
the curtain and speaks with Abraham. He repre-
sents the " Eternal Father." The verses are spoken
in a loud monotonous chant, each verse being literally
measured out by motion up and down the stage, the
only change being when the music becomes faster or
slower. The music is composed of the two Basque
instruments the churula, a shrill pipe, and the tam-
boril, a kind of guitar with six strings, played by the
same person. The strangeness of the scene, the loud
chanting of the actors as the tone rises and falls, the
fantastic costumes, the dances of the " Satans," the
prayers of the Christians, and especially the slow
march and action of the blues, dignified and majestic,
and the turbulent, restless movements of the reds, are
not soon forgotten.

The Basque language, Eskuara, was described by
the Spanish historian, Mariana, as " coarse and bar-
barous," and a traveller among the Basques in the
Middle Ages recorded that to hear them speak one
would say they were dogs barking. In English, the
word "jingo" has been said to derive from the Basque

ESKUAL-ERRIA 71

Jincoa, " God," introduced by Wellington's troops
after the Peninsular War. The Basque word is an
abbreviation of Jaungoicoa, "the Lord on high,"
jauna, "lord," being the common form of greeting
between peasant and peasant. It becomes more and
more rare to hear pure Basque spoken ; foreign words
creep in and, with the definite article "a" suffixed,
hide under a Basque form: dewhova (Lat. tempus)
thus ousting the Basque word eguraldia for " weather,"
gorpliuntza, (Lat. corpus) being " body," and so on.1
Pure Basque recedes to remote villages in the moun-
tains, and there the Basque maintains his ancient
customs, as averse from change to-day as when
Horace described him as " Cantabrum indoctum juga
ferre nostra." 2

1 Yet in a codex of the twelfth century occur eighteen Basque
words, all of which, except four, are still used, if in slightly altered
forms. The Basque language gives many proofs of the extreme
antiquity of the Basques. The words for "knife," "axe," etc., are
derived from aitz, meaning " stone." The words for "Monday " (aste-
lehena, " first day of the week"), "Tuesday" (astcartea, "middleof the
week"), "Wednesday" (asteazkena, "last of the week") point to a
week of three days. The counting is vigesimal : "forty" is berrogoi
(twice twenty) ; " sixty," hirogoi (thrice twenty). The word for
"twenty," hogoi, has a curious similarity with the Greek eiKori and
the sheepscoring gigget. There are no general terms — no word for
" tree " (for which arbola is used), but for different kinds of trees ;
no word for "sister," but for "brother's sister," "sister's sister;"
and no abstract terms (karitatca, jyrudentzia, etc., being used).

2 The best account of the Basques is to be found in the late Mr.
Wentworth Webster's " Loisirs d'un Etranger au Pays Basque,"
and in his "The Basques, the Oldest People of Western Europe; "
in M. Julien Vinson's "Les Basques et le Pays Basque" and
Francisque Michel's "Les Basques."

72 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

II. — Basque Customs

An old Latin account speaks of the Basques as
going nowhere — not even to church — without arms,
usually a bow and arrows, and says that they are
" gens affabilis, elegans et hilaris — courteous, graceful,
and light-hearted ; " 1 but, in spite of their known
hospitality, their distrust of the foreigner and their
hatred of intrusion are shown in more than one of
their proverbs, as " The stranger-guest does not work
himself, and prevents you from working." The
Basques are, indeed, the most energetic, as they are
the most ancient people of the Peninsula. " Naguia
bethi lansu — The idle man is ever busy," says another
of their proverbs ; and, again, " Idle youth brings
needy old age." 2 Their fields are well and economi-
cally cultivated, and if their methods are antiquated,
this is partly due to the mountainous nature of the
country and the smallness of the holdings, making it
simpler, e.g., to thresh corn by beating it sheaf by
sheaf against a stone. Numerous small factories — of

1 A French writer,' Le Pays, speaks thus of the Basque country
in the seventeenth century : " La joye y commence avec la vie
et n'y finit qu'avec la mort. Elle paroist en toutes leurs actions.
Les prestres en ont leur part aussi bien que les autres. J'ai remar-
que qu'aux nopces c'est toujours le cure' ,qui mene le branle."
Another Frenchman of the same period says that the Basques of
Labourd are "des gens toujours fols et souvent yvres." Similarly,
Larramendi says that the Basques are "muy inclinados a ver
fiestas."

2 Cf. their proverbs, " Lan lasterra, Ian alferra — Rapid work, idle
work;" and " Geroa, alferraren leloa — To-morrow is the refrain of
the idle."

ESKUAL-ERRIA 73

cloth as at Vergara, of paper at Tolosa, of iron and
steel at Eibar and Elgoibar, of furniture at Azpeitia
— and many quarries and tile-factories prove their
industry ; and entering a small Basque town such as
Elgoibar, one may hear in tiny shops on all sides the
sound of sandal-makers and workers in wood and
leather. They know how to work, and they know
how to enjoy themselves with thoroughness at the
village fetes. From dawn to dusk the ball is to be
heard against the wall of the pelota court on Sundays,
with intervals of dancing to the shrill pipe and drum
of the chunchunero. Voltaire, thinking of their love
of dancing, described them as " un petit peuple qui
danse sur les Pyrenees," and certain dances still sur-
vive. The sword-dance, ezpata danza, is one of the
most remarkable, and has been described by Pierre
Loti in " Figures et choses qui passaient ; " and other
dances are those representing the primitive methods
of agriculture, the vintage, weaving, etc. The Basque
pelota has, unfortunately, become, of recent years, a
game of professionals, and as played, e.g., at Madrid,
the interest is rather in the betting than in the play.
The enthusiasm formerly excited among the Basques
by the game is illustrated by the story that several
Basque soldiers left the Army of the Rhine, returned
to their country to play a game of ball, and, having
played and won it, rejoined the army in time to take
part in the battle of Austerlitz.1 A game played in

1 The great game at Irun, between French and Spanish Basques,
about the year 1840, has become a legend, and is still spoken of by
the peasants. GascoSa, the chief French player, was offered 10,000

74 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

the immense court of a small Basque village is still a
splendid sight, though it has lost much of its splen-
dour, and the old Rebot is fast dying out. Pierre
Loti has described a game of Blaid, as seen in a
French-Basque village, in his novel of the Basque
country, " Ramuntcho " ; and this form of the game
has been played in Paris and London. But old
peasants will shake their heads and say it is no
longer " as of old." The expression " of old " is com-
mon on the lips of both French and Spanish Basques j1
they willingly praise the past, and are intensely con-
servative of all their customs, their immemorial lan-
guage, their games, privileges, religion. The ox-carts,
with wheels of solid wood, to be seen under the vine-
trellises of Basque farms, seem as old as the withered
trunk of the oak of Guernica, and similarly many
ancient customs have been retained. In some parts,
at funerals, the men wear long cloaks reaching to
the feet, the women also wearing long, full cloaks
with hoods, that completely hide the face. The men
go first, and then all the women — men and women in

francs " pour faire trahison," but refused, were it ten times the
sum. Oxen, crops, fields and houses were freely betted. The ball,
we are told, was slily wetted for service, tintacks were scattered in
the court, and Gascofia, accustomed to play barefoot, called for a
pair of heavy wooden sabots, and continued the game. The French
won, and were obliged to escape across the frontier without chang-
ing, and chistera on arm. Those were the times when the peasants
left their farms to play for the love of the game. To-day the game
is in the hands of a few professionals, for the benefit of foreigners,
the result often arranged beforehand. " Aujourd'hui," said an aged
player of the frontier, " les joueurs rient quelquefois : nous ne
riions pas, nous."

1 Antafio, en los antaSos, dans le temps.

ESKUAL-ERRIA 75

single file — the chief mourners coming last. Both at
weddings and funerals, feasts were formerly given on
such an extensive scale that the family was often
nearly ruined, and a law (fwero) was passed forbid-
ding to invite any but relations to the third degree.
But the wedding-feast is still sufficiently imposing ;
it continues for many hours, and immediately after-
wards the young begin dancing, while the old play
cards. As to the offerings at funerals, " none but an
eye-witness," says Larramendi, in the eighteenth cen-
tury, "could believe the quantity of bread and wax
that is offered. Moreover, at these big funerals, in
some places a live ox, and in others a sheep, is brought
as an offering to the church door, and when the ser-
vice is over it is taken away, and a fixed sum of
money is given to the priest." ! This curious custom,
a survival of the offerings to the dead and a trace of
ancestor-worship, has not yet wholly died out. In
one village at least (Arriba, on the borders of Navarre
and Guipuzcoa) it is customary at funerals to offer
bread and wax, and to bring to the church either a
quarter of veal or a live sheep, which is afterwards
given to the priest. The Basques are intensely reli-

1 Corografia de Guipuzcoa : " No es creible si no se ve el
mucho pan y cera que se ofrece. . . . Ademas en tales grandes
funerales por modo de ofrenda se trae a la puerta de la iglesia un
buey vivo en unos lugares y en otros un carnero tanibien vivo que,
acabado el oficio, se vuelve a la caseria 6 carniceria, y por esto se
paga al cura una cantidad determinada en dinero." He estimates
tbe bouse expenses at 500 duros (or dollars), and tbe Cburcb
expenses at anotber 500, truly an immense sum for tbose days.
Wben tbe burials took place in tbe cburcb, tbe offerings of bread
and wax would be made on tbe tomb.

76 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

gious, and it is characteristic of them that before they
were converted to Christianity they were the terror
of the Christians — indeed, the pilgrims to Santiago de
Compostella at all times feared the passage through
the Basque Provinces, the strange language adding to
their difficulties (" La Biscaye," they said, " ou il y a
d'etrange monde, oil Ton n'entend pas les gens"). The
Basques troop in to early Mass every Sunday, often
by rough mountain paths, from farms lying a league
away. Yet it must not be thought that the Basques
are priest-ridden ; the priests are respected, and often
take part in their games or walk many miles across
the hills to visit the sick. But though the Basques
are often narrow and fanatical, they have far too
much dignity and independence to be the blind fol-
lowers of the priests. In the Carlist wars they fought
chiefly for their old privileges, or fueros, and the
result of the wars was that nearly all their fueros
were lost, in 1839 and 1876. " Nothing is so fair as
liberty," says one of their songs, and their national
song, "Guernikako Arbola,"1 with its stirring air,
celebrates " the holy tree of Guernica, loved by
all the Basques." In the little green-set town of
Guernica a fine new oak, some forty years old, has
taken the place of the old tree, now a mere trunk
protected by glass, while in the little pillared temple
are still to be seen the seven marble seats on which
assembled —

" Peasant and lord in their appointed seat,
Guardians of Biscay's ancient liberty."

1 The music and words are by Iparraguirre.

ESKUAL-ERRIA 77

These are the two last lines of Wordsworth's sonnet
to the

" Oak of Guernica I Tree of holier power
Than that which in Dodona did enshrine,
So faith too fondly deemed, a voice divine."

Noble, handsome, graceful in all their movements
hardy and shrewd, the Basques are active and untiring
whether as farmers, smugglers, soldiers, or pelotaris.
They live aloof in scattered farms, a healthy open-air
life (their word for rich is aberatz, from abere, head
of cattle), and, indeed, in a town they tend to lose
some of their good qualities. Their dress has always
an air of careful neatness and distinction, with the
beret, white shirt (without a tie), dark blue or black
coat thrown over shoulder (or long blouse), silent
sandals and the peculiar mahhila, a stout iron-pointed
stick of medlar. They are shrinking into their
mountains, a race doomed to perish, " un peuple qui
s'en va." They have watched during thousands of
years new races spring up and prosper around them,
and in the twentieth century they see trains and
motors penetrate to the inaccessible places where the
Roman legions were checked, or Charlemagne with
all his peerage fell. An inscription here and there
shows them bowing to destiny and the relentless
march of time in saddened resignation, or betaking
themselves to the consolation of their religion — the
following inscriptions, for instance, along the frontier :
" Man is beaten by every hour, and the last leads him
to the grave." 1 " Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat." 2
1 Sare. ■ Urrugne, above the sun-dial on the church.

78 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

"Ici fait l'home cequi pcvfc et fortune ce que elle
vevt." l " Post fata resurgo." 2 " Deum time, Mariam
invoca." 3 " Orhoit hilcea." i The privileges that
remain to the Basques are few, consisting in a slightly
less acute centralization than obtains in other pro-
vinces of Spain.5 They have no fueros left to make
it worth their while to take up arms afresh, and they
still have vivid memories of their wasted fields and
desolate farms in the last Carlist war. But were
their ancient religion to be really attacked, or were
an attempt made to expel the monks from the Basque
provinces, the peasants could be counted upon to
make a desperate resistance, more in defence of their

1 Saint Jean de Luz.

2 Saint Pee, formerly Stus. Petrus de Ivarren. " There is a little
village called St. Pc, where I was stopped a day or two by very bad
weather. I was lodged at the Cure''s, a good old man, from whose
conversation about the state of France I received light which had
important results. He was very clever and very well-informed,
and took not only right, but large views of things." — The Duke of
Wellington to J. W. Croker.

3 Near Louhossoa.

4 " Eemember death." — Osses.

5 Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa are, with Barcelona and Pontevedra,
the most densely populated provinces in Spain. The Basques have
a genius for administration which is not to be found in other parts
of the Peninsula. Their excellent roads and cleanly kept towns form
a striking contrast. They have a true love of local independence,
and in the eighteenth century we find two Basque frontier villages,
Vera and Sare, styling themselves in a treaty the " two Republics."
The treaty concerned Yerbas y Aguas y Bellotas ; grass, water and
acorns. Similarly, to-day, in the Basque provinces groups of small
villages and houses are joined in free " hermandades," " universi-
dades," " anteiglesias," " valles." The few privileges that remain
are jealously guarded. The Navarrese will tell you with pride that
theirs is the only province where a man is allowed to find a substi-
tute in the conscriptions.

ESKUAL-ERRIA 79

independence than on behalf of the monks themselves.
Foreigners have often misunderstood the Basques,1
for they are reserved and silent towards the new-comer
("Gizonciki arabotz andi,"they say — "Little man, much
noise"; " the empty barrel makes the most noise," and
so on). But there is no suspicion of commercialism
about their love of liberty such as has often been
attributed to the Catalans : they love their beautiful
land, the Eskual-erria, for its own sake and the religion
and customs of their forefathers, and the strangers who
visit their country soon learn to love and admire its
broad healing power and spirit of ancient peace. It
is a country of civilization without great cities, where
exists an intimate and ennobling relation between
the soil and the inhabitants.

1 The Spanish Premier himself has said in the Senate (Octoher,
1910), that if the Basque Provinces are more advanced than other
parts of Spain this is due not to their merits, but to the favouritism
of governments. A knowledge of the Basques, however, hardly
warrants this statement. Since the abolition of the fueros, says
the late Mr. Butler Clarke, in " Modern Spain," " their efforts are
restricted to making the administration of1 their provinces a model
for the rest of Spain."

IN REMOTE NAVARRE

NAVARRE is held to be one of the chief
bulwarks of Clericalism in Spain, and
so remote and isolated are its villages,
so primitive its life and agriculture, so
few its means of communication, that it might seem
that no breath of modern times could have penetrated
to this province. Lying on the frontier of France, it
is defended from the inroads of civilization by its
mountains and wide wastes of desert land. In those
lonely groups of houses of massive yellow-brown
stone, clustered around their church, and crowning
rocky hills of the same colour, there is no room for
differences of opinion, and he who does not attend
Mass at least once in the year is forced to go and live
elsewhere. Should you ask how he can be forced to
go, the answer you will receive is, " By the law, by
public opinion." Quite recently a traveller, arriving
famished at one of these villages of Navarre, with no
smaller change than a French napoleon, went from
door to door in vain. No one would accept this
doblon de oro (gold doubloon). Finally, a woman

IN REMOTE NAVARRE 81

who had lived for a time at Salies de Beam consented
to receive it, and sent it later to be changed at the
capital, Pamplona. Yet even here in Navarre there
is an appreciable body of liberal opinion, and even in
the heart of the Carlist country, at Estella, the Club
Carlista is faced by the ensign of the Circulo Liberal ;
even here in all but the smaller villages opinion is
divided, and the policy of Clericals and anti-Clericals
discussed with animation. Those who served in the
second Carlist war recognize that the times have
altered, and that leaders, or cabecillas, are no longer
forthcoming to lead them in swift night marches
across the hills, willing though they might be to
follow. At Estella a fort taken by the Carlists is
now a peaceful covered market-place, and the palace
where Don Carlos held his court is a pleasant fonda
with a cool patio of flowers. Those who enter
Navarre by the Convent of Roncesvalles and the Pass
where Roland was slain, and which Byng a thousand
years later, in 1813, was forced to evacuate with ten
thousand troops, may be easily deceived into imagin-
ing: that Navarre is a land of meadows and green
woods and pleasant streams. The swift river Urrobi
runs through passes of rugged hills,but overgrown with
box and beech trees and pines. Steep walls of rock
are in summer covered with foxgloves and bramble
and broom, scabious, St. John's wort, mallow, bell
heather, and many other flowers and ferns, and in
places the hills are red with wild strawberries. The
Urrobi forces its way through barriers of grey rock
and over ledges in green pools and white rushing

F

82 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

torrents. But this is not the true Navarre. There
no trees are to be seen, and one is perpetually in a
wide circle of bare hills. The country is the most
desolate imaginable, formed by bare, ashen-grey hills
(scored and gashed by dry torrent-beds) and valleys
equally barren. The wind hisses, and crickets chatter
loudly in a few stunted elms by the roadside. All is
greyness without colour, and in late summer the
stubble-fields far and near add a new note of desola-
tion, and it seems out of keeping with the character
of the country that these fields should ever be a fresh
green in spring. Indeed, the occasional hollows of
olives and plots of vineyards have an air of unreality
in the surrounding wilderness of crumbling dust and
shale. Yet some welcome patches of colour are to be
found, if it is only a line of chicory or of huge purple
thistles along a stubble-field, or a blue-bloused peasant
jogging down the dusty road on a mule with crimson
trappings. And on the threshing-floors around the
villages, where work is carried on far into the night,
often by lightning flash, the white shirts and blue
blouses of the men, and the pink and red dresses and
long white headkerchiefs of the women form a pictur-
esque and beautiful scene through the clouds of flying
chaff and ruddy golden grain falling in heavier, more
compact masses. For here the threshing is all done
by hand with the help of mules, oxen, and horses,
which are driven round and round, drawing all the
children of the village on little wooden sledges. When
the grain has been thus sifted, the process is com-
pleted by throwing it into the air from long wooden

IN REMOTE NAVARRE 83

shovels and close-pronged wooden forks. The corn
is grown on precipices and sheer mountain-sides, and
is brought down to the threshing-floors on donkeys,
which disappear beneath their rustling load. The
men who live in this grim country are also stern and
grim, harsh featured, hard, and strong ; and, though
hospitable and not unkindly, they are fierce and
obstinate upon occasion, and sometimes cruel to their
animals. Their food is rough, but not unplentiful ;
of wheat there is no lack, and with some vines and
olives they are content to have the three necessities
of a Spanish peasant's life. The villages would
often pass unnoticed on their rocky hills were it not
for the outstanding feature of their grim, massive
churches; the church of Gallipienzo dominates a
mountain, and is so solid and fine that it seems to
dwarf it. These churches are to be seen for very
many miles across the completely bare country, and
at night the lights of the village streets form, from
long distances, strange, irregular letters on a mountain-
side, making the village far more conspicuous than it
would be by day. Sansol, a little village not far
from Logrono, looks from some distance like a great
fortress of brown stone with tiny black loop-holes
(the glassless windows) ; behind is a long backbone
of grey, rocky hill, and beyond the purple-black
Monte Jura with a glimpse of white road. Bitter
and fierce are the winters in Navarre, and pitiless the
sun in summer ; but for all its forbidding aspects it
repays the discomforts of a visit to its remote dis-
tricts. Lumbier is like a miniature Toledo, on its

84 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

bare hill above the winding river, and Sanguesa, of
brown yellow stone, on the Aragon, of the same colour,
has its magnificently sculptured church of Santa
Maria, and other beautiful carvings on private houses.
And after a few weeks' acquaintance with the harsh
country and the proud inhabitants, the traveller will
realize the possibility of those relentless Carlist wars
which still send a thrill through those who recall
them, and the difficulty of hunting down cabecillas
who knew the country and of bringing the war to
an end.

VI
SPANISH CITIES

SPAIN is pre-eminently a land of cities. Often
they stand conspicuous in an arid and tree-
less tract of country, glancing like jewels
in a sunburnt land. The pleasant and
fertile strip of country, on the French frontier is not
properly Spanish, but Basque. On the other hand,
nothing could be more Spanish than the little quaint
old town of Fuenterrabia. The original name was
Basque — Ondarrabia, " The two banks of sand." The
Romans, hearing the name, but ignorant of its mean-
ing and seeing, moreover, the swift flow of the tide
beneath the walls of the town, called it Unda Rapida.1

1 The Basques took their revenge by the hand of M. l'Abbe
d'lharce de Bidassouet. In his " Histoire des Cantabres," torn. I.
Paris, 1825 (vol. ii. was not published), he derives all names of
places from Basque, as the original language of the world. " Je
ne serai pas assez hardi," ho says, " pour soutenir que le Pere
Eternel parlat basque," but he is really convinced that it is so.
L'Andalousie, with the help of the article, he derives from two
Basque words, " landa lusia," long land. Versailles is a Basque
word, so is Athens, so is Helicon. Norway puzzles him for a moment,
but soon with the remark that "Norvege est un mot alterS et
corrompu," he tosses it aside and proceeds on his reckless etymo-
logical course. Certainly to the irresponsible philologist Basque offers

86 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

From the Latin Unda Rapida or Fons Rapidus came
the Spanish Fuenterrabia,1 and the French in their
turn, connecting it with the Arabs, called it Fontarabie.
The Basque name is, however, still in use, and one of
the streets of Irun where, as in many other towns
and villages, the street names are written up both
in Spanish and Basque, has the full-sounding name
Ondarrabiko Karreka — the street of Ondarrabia. If
one may compare small things with great, the cities
of Northern Spain are like castles built by children
in the sand, and left high and dry by the receding
tide. City after city stood walled and bulwarked
on the extreme fringe of the Christian territory, for a
time the court and capital of Spain, till a fresh
conquest drove back the Moors a lap further south.

a delightful field. For instance, the name of the desolate salt lake
of Kevir in Persia has been derived from a word " gavr" or " gav "
(" hollow," " depression "). In Basque " gabe " means without, and
the word for night is also " gabe " (no doubt as being a hollow
without light). Then we have the Gaves, de Pau, d'Oloron, etc. ;
the Spanish "gaveta" (a pigeonhole), "gavia" (pit dug for planting
a tree) ; " cavus," " cave " and so forth. But to draw inferences as
to the origin of the Iberians, as to whether the same or different
peoples inhabited the Caucasus and the Pyrenees, or even as to
whether " le Pere Eternel parlat Basque," is a very different matter,
beset with pitfalls innumerable.

1 See Wentworth Webster, " Les Loisirs d'un Etranger au
Pays Basque." 1901. This was a common practice of the Romans
who, meeting words so rough and horrid to their Latin pronunciation
in the land of the Basques, "quorum nomina," according to
PomponiusMela, " nostro ore concipi nequeunt," would smooth and
round these names and give them a Latin derivation. The Spaniards
may have done the same in the case of Valencia Island, Co. Kerry.
The form in old maps is Ballinish (Innish, " island," and ball, " home "
or perhaps " mouth "—the harbour the mouth of the island), and the
peasants still pronounce the name Valinch.

SPANISH CITIES 87

This in part accounts for the grim and wonderful
Spanish cities, with their magnificent buildings and
fortifications, that still exist, but exist with no longer
the stir of a great destiny within their walls, but
merely as it were the mighty shells of an extinct life.
So Burgos, Leon, Toledo, were capital cities for a
space, thronged with the busy traffic of courtiers and
warriors, and Avila, the city of saints, has the great
fortifications of a frontier town. It is difficult to
believe that Toledo has at all changed since the Cid's
horse miraculously stayed before the burning light
hidden in the wall of one of its streets, and the water-
carriers to-day go leisurely down to the river, their
donkeys' panniers laden with earthen jars, as when
Cervantes wrote " La Ilustre Fregona." And, indeed,
Spanish cities are little liable to change. The steep
uneven ways of Toledo and Salamanca and Segovia
scorn modern traffic. The passing of a carriage is
possible in the main streets, but is a rare event that
rattles and reverberates along the walls. More
suitable are the stately processions, their banners
showing brightly against the brown-yellow buildings.
Segovia has been called the queen of Castilian cities,
as Toledo is the king. And Segovia must ever
remain medieval, a city of a hundred levels, sinking
by terraces of half-ruinous walls, tufted with grass
and flowers, from the Cathedral down to the foot of
its mighty Koman aqueduct. A Latin author three
hundred years ago wrote that "in Segovia nemo
otiosus, nemo mendicus" — there were no beggars at
Segovia. It would be unsafe to assert this of any

88 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Spanish town to-day. Spain is no country of " neat
cities and populous towns full of most industrious
artificers." Such towns — Barcelona,1 Bilbao — there
are, but mostly the cities are, in the words of Burton,
"cities decayed," which contain many "Spanish
loiterers," though they are not " base and poor
towns," nor are the people " squalid, ugly, uncivil."
The southern cities show a softer influence. The
surrounding country is less abrupt and harsh, and
the stern features of the north are forgotten. Cadiz
lies out into the sea, a Spanish Venice, cut in straight
white streets, like the slices of an iced cake. Seville
is wonderful at all times, a maravilla to foreigners
and Spaniards. The Spanish novelist Palacio Valdes,
in " La Hermana San Sulpicio," has described it
during nights of midsummer, when to go through
the city was to visit the interior of the houses, for
from the patios, where the families were assembled,
great rays of light shot through the iron screen-doors
into the dark and stifled streets, and guitar and song
broke the stillness : " Seville at such an hour had a
magical look, a charm that disturbed the mind."
But of all the cities of the south Granada has a
peculiar fascination. This is largely due to its many

1 Yet those who connect Barcelona with the smoke and gloom
of an industrial city, having heard it spoken of as the Manchester
of Spain, are mistaken. Barcelona is still worthy of the praise of
the Venetian ambassador in the sixteenth century, who called it a
" bellissima citta," with " copia di giardini bellisimi," and of the
praises of Cervantes in " Don Quixote," and in " Las Dos
Doncellas," where it is the " flower of the beautiful cities of the
world and an honour to Spain."

SPANISH CITIES 89

contrasts. It is a city of orange groves and fountains,
yet it lies over two thousand feet above sea-level, and
is a summer rather than a winter city; the fiercest
heat is relieved by cool air from the eternal snows
of the Sierra Nevada, and the gardens of the
Alhambra and the Generalife, with their n^rtles,
cypresses and cedars, give a delicious shade. In
winter icy cold strikes through the marble halls of
the Alhambra; yet it is never more beautiful than
seen in February from San Cristobal, or from the
cactus-covered hill beneath San Miguel, or from
where the Darro flows rapidly far below. For it
rises above the slender branches of elms and poplars,
grey and in parts purple from their swelling buds — the
red and yellow-brown towers, the crumbling walls of
red earth and brick and large smooth rounded stones
of white, or black, or red, the trailing ivy, the open
white-pillared galleries. A few almond-trees are in
flower, and above to the left stand the long lines of
cypresses of the grey-white Generalife, where flower
celandines and daffodils. Many of these Spanish
cities are visited chiefly for their great ancient
buildings and Cathedrals ; yet the most part of
them deserve a more patient study for their own
sake, for their memories of old, and for the life of their
narrow winding streets. The Spanish writer Azorin
(Martinez Ruiz), in a book of few pages,1 conveys
some wonderfully clear-cut impressions of Spain.
He turns with preference to details of the centuries
of Spain's greatness, when Murcia, Valencia, and
1 " Espafia : Hombres y paisajes." 1909.

90 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Seville were famous for their silks, Talavera for
its earthenware, Toledo for its swords, when the
gloves of Ocafia or the spurs of Ajofrin were
unrivalled; or to the survival of old Spain in a
picture, or a building, or a city. Thus he loves to
wander through Leon with its spirit of ancient Spain
and its classical street-names — here a cobbled grass-
grown plaza with pale acacias and ancient walls,
the slow flight of doves and the wind rustling torn
pieces of paper ; there a quiet convent patio with
bays and rigid cypresses. For him the narrow
streets of Cordoba have a deeper charm than those
of any other Spanish city. He wanders through
the labyrinth of intricate winding ways, with
glimpses of small pillared patios of flowers and
fountains, and finds everywhere silence and a deep
serene melancholy, restfulness, oblivion, and a harmony
of soft shades, nowhere the light-hearted frivolity
conventionally attributed to Andalucia. Azorin's
originality consists in forcing a few apparently
insignificant details to yield the whole spirit of a
city, a country, a people. If he mentions the
Mosque of Cordoba, it is but to note the beggars
taking the sun in the Patio de los Naranjos, the
sparrows twittering in the orange-trees, the sound
of pitchers filling at the fountain. He gives us
poignant descriptions of dead provincial cities and
ruined ancestral houses. The decadence of Spain
brought flourishing cities to low estate : Spain's
revival menaces them with a fresh ruin. Old
narrow passages and intricate courts and sculptured

SPANISH CITIES 91

houses make place for the introduction of tram-
ways and broad asphalt streets. The old Santander
described by Pereda survives only in his books,
the old parts of Barcelona and Valencia are fast
disappearing, and happy is the city such as Toledo
whose position on abrupt rocks with no level spaces
seems to promise an eternity of medievalism and
individuality.

I

VII

IN OLD CASTILLE

T is with astonishment and a kind of fear that
the traveller passes through the high-lying
plains of Old Castille, journeying swiftly
from city to city, to

" Old towns whose history lies hid
In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid . . ."

for in these intervening tracts, sun-parched and wind-
swept, it seems scarcely possible that men should live.
The villages are closely huddled together, little com-
pact masses of low, unwhitewashed houses, without a
tree or garden, so colourless, and clinging to the soil
as sometimes to pass unnoticed. Rivers flow between
low, bare banks without bush or tree, like streaks of
mother-of-pearl inlaid in earthenware. And there
are wide tracts of land without a house or boundary,
a continuous desolation with no signs of life, except
here and there a flock of sheep or herd of goats,
or a line of peasants returning at sunset from
their work.' Surely life here can have but few

IN OLD CASTILLE 93

attractions ; there can be no joy of the soil, little
temptation for Berceo's "mat Labrador" of the
thirteenth century, who " loved the earth more than
he loved the Creator," and " would alter landmarks
to enlarge his estate " — cambiaba los mojones por
ganar eredat Yet the slower trains are invaded by
a merry throng of pleasant, courteous, good-looking
peasants, oval-faced, with splendid teeth and eye-
lashes, who speed the journey with gay conversation
and shrill singing, and pass constantly from one
carriage to another to greet friends or to avoid the
officials who inquire awkwardly after tickets. They
have plenty of life and cheerfulness, and it is with
renewed wonder that one looks at the dead, crumbling
villages where they live, and remembers the piercing
force of the Castilian sun in summer and the icy,
penetrating winter winds. All day they must work
without the shelter of a single hedge or tree in the
searching wind1 that sifts the soil, or under a sun
that parches and shrivels it into dust. But a nearer
acquaintance reveals a certain charm2 about these

1 A Spanish proverb says : " When it rains, it rains ; when it
snows, it snows; but 'tis bad weather when it blows." Agriculture
in many parts of Spain is literally " airdvevdev eV i7p0v ny/nuTa
ira.<Tx*lv — to suffer woes apart upon the land."

2 Cf. Pfo Baroja, "Cesar 6 Nada." Madrid, 1910: "Hay una
hora en estos pueblos castellanos, adustos y viejos, de paz y
serenidad ideales. Es el comenzar de la mafiana. Todavia los
gallos cantan, las campanadas de la iglesia se derraman por el
aire y el sol comienza a penetrar en las calles en rafagas de luz.
La mafiana es un' diluvio de claridad que se precipita sobre el
pueblo amarillento. El cielo esta azul, el aire limpio, puro y
diafano ; la atmosfera transparente no da casi efectos de

94 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

villages of hard, clear names : Campillo, Cantala-
pedra, Pedroso, Madrigal — a charm of clean-swept
spaces, and clear, luminous air and silent intensity ;
and the country ceases to be uniformly colourless.
Here a woman in a dress of light-blue linen, with
long flowing headkerchief of white, passes on a
donkey through fields of golden ripe corn ; there,
from narrow windows in a street of yellow-brown
houses, hang bright patches of geraniums and carna-
tions in flower. And the doorways of square or
round or pointed arches give entrance to cool, silent

perspectiva, y su masa et£rea hace vibrar los contornos de las
casas, de los campanarios y de los remates de los tejados. El
viento frfo y sutil juega en las encrucijadas y se entretiene en
torcer los tallos de los geranios y de los claveles que Uamean
en los balcones. Hay por todas partes un olor de jara y de retama
quemada que viene de los hornos donde se cuece el pan, y un olor
de alhucema que viene de los zaguanes." Castille has been a little
neglected by the novelists in comparison with other regions. But
recently Ricardo Le6n (in " El Amor de los Amores," 1910), has
sung the praises of the ancha, herdica tierra de Castilla, its austere
simplicity and strength, its serene atmosphere, its golden crops, its
flocks of sheep, clear streams, thyme-scented solitudes, and far
horizons. And Azorln, in a short study, " En la Meseta " (La
Vanguardia of Barcelona, January 4, 1911), as in his books " Es-
pana," " El Alma Castellana," " Los Pueblos," skilfully portrays the
inner spirit of Castille : " Por la ventana se columbra un paisaje llano,
seco, desmantelado ; a lo lejos se divisan unas montafias con las
cimas blanqueadas por la nieve. . . . Todo el silencio, toda la
rigidez, toda la adustez de csta inmoble vida castellana esta concen-
trada en los rebanos que cruzan la llanura lentamente y se recogen
en los oteros y los valles do las montaflag. Mirad ese rabadan, envu-
elto en su capa recia y parda, contemplando un cielo azul sin nubes,
ante el paisaje abrupto y grandiosode lamontafia, y tendreis expli-
cado el tipo del campesino castellano castizo, hist6rico : noble,
austoro, grave y elegante en el adomau, corto, sontencioso y agudo
en sus razonos."

IN OLD CASTILLE 95

courts. Azorin has described the old Castilian
hidalgo, who has never left his ancestral house, with
its large rooms, many of them unfurnished, and old
portraits consigned to an attic and covered with the
dust of centuries : " His lands have disappeared, his
furniture has disappeared ; he does nothing ; he has
a sad intensity of expression," and when further
misfortune befalls him he says, "There is no help
for it — que le vamos d hacer ! " Everywhere is decay,
and the trace of vanished splendour. So these old
ruined hidalgos live out their grey, monotonous lives
in some ancient town or village of Castille, amid the
immense plains with "distances of radiant sky and
faint blue lines of mountains." The blue smoke rises
from scented fires of rosemary, and, as the bells ring
to Matins, the doves swerve and circle, the grey doves
sweep slowly across the sky perpetually blue. And
night and day the doors of the houses are kept
continually closed, with a deserted air beneath the
broad coats-of arms carved in stone. Azorin describes
minutely a Castilian town, standing among cornfields
and olives — one of those towns that the foreigner
rarely has the courage to visit. Its streets are
narrow and tortuous. It contains three ancient inns,
four churches, three hermitages, two convents. It
has no industries save a few ruined cloth manu-
factures, and only the usurer flourishes. It contains
fourteen students (who have not taken their degree),
four doctors, twelve lawyers (only six of whom earn
a living, and this by slandering one another, and
from time to time bringing a blackmail suit against

96 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

some poor-spirited inhabitant). There is a Guild of
the Christ of the Dying, and when a member dies a
messenger goes through the streets ringing a bell and
crying : " At such an hour the funeral of Don Fulano."
The summers are fiery, the winters are long and cruel.
No visits are paid ; doors and windows remain closed ;
few persons go through the streets, but in the plazas,
on clear days of winter, dense groups of men may be
seen taking the sun, wrapped in their brown plaids
and capas. Nothing happens; the deep silence is
broken by the clang of a forge-hammer or by the
crowing of a cock. In time of Carnival a few
"masks" pass, dressed up with mats and carrying
old brooms. The labourers are poverty-stricken, and
meat is the luxury of a few "rich" inhabitants.
Azorin notes the Castilian's "fundamental energy,
aloofness, indifference, and lofty disdain, with sudden
inspirations of heroism " ; and we may count it no
small heroism to live on, proudly uncomplaining, in
surroundings so harsh and discomfortable.

VIII
THE DESERT AND THE SOWN

THE French soldiers, looking at the trifling
Manzanares and its mighty bridges, may
have exclaimed, "So even the Spanish
rivers run away." But those who, at
sight of tiny threads of water in immense river-beds,
are inclined to ask, with Don Pedro in Much Ado
about Nothing, " What need the bridge much broader
than the flood?" find their answer after a few days
of heavy rain. Marks six feet and more high on
houses many hundreds of yards from the banks of the
Ebro record the rising of the waters. Thus, in many
districts, crops which have survived the summer
drought are swept away by the autumn deluge, and
those who have cried for rain are mocked with ruin
when the waters "prevail exceedingly upon the earth."
Spain's agriculture perishes for lack of water, yet
water abounds, whether subterranean, as in parts of
Castille, or in the copious snows of the high-lying
regions, where the snow is sometimes preserved in
snow-pits, 2>ozos de nieve, or in these periodical floods;

G

98 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and it would seem that the philologist had Spain in
his mind who connected the Basque adjective idorra,
meaning " dry," with vSwp, the Greek for water. To
utilize, extend, and regulate the water supply is a
problem of vital importance to Spain — a problem
which has long occupied the thoughts of Spanish
statesmen. Alfonso the Learned, in his "Cronica
General," says, " This Spain, then, of which we speak
is as the paradise of God. . . . For the most part, it
is watered with streams and fountains, and wells are
never lacking in all places that have need of them ; "
but Strabo, more impartial, had remarked of Spain
that, " For the most part, it yields but a poor suste-
nance. For large districts are composed of moun-
tains and woodland and plains, with thin and, more-
over, not uniformly well- watered soil — ovdt tovt^v
ofiaXwg tvvSpov." And since Strabo's time many
have been the alterations for the worse. Turde-
tania, for instance, the country between Seville and
Huelva, is no longer marvellously prosperous — Qavjia-
(ttwcj ivtvx& ', in fact, South Estremadura, of old one
of Rome's granaries, is now one of the most desolate
regions in Spain. But the worst decay is that of the
forests. The woods have fallen and fallen, and still
the axe rings avidly in those woods that remain.
The very words for a wood, bosquc or selva, have
become rare and poetical. Thus the soil is further
parched and impoverished, while towns and villages
stand unsheltered from wind and sun. The Escorial,
which grew up among woods, may now be seen from
afar in its almost sinister magnilicence across grey

THE DESERT AND THE SOWN 99

hills and plains without a tree ; and Madrid, though
a tree figures prominently in the city arms, looks out
upon plains from which all traces of former oak
and chestnut forests have long since vanished. The
absence of trees in Spain increases both the dryness
and the floods, and afforestation is therefore quite as
important as irrigation. The canalization of rivers
may diminish the floods, but while there is no soil on
the hill-sides — or soil so light that it is swept away
by heavy rainfalls — the rain must continue to be a
blessing strangely disguised. It is calculated that in
six or eight years the trees would knit the soil
together, and give it sufficient staying power to resist
and absorb the rains, though, of course, there would
as yet be no actual profit of timber. Outlay of toil
and money for so distant a remuneration is not con-
genial to the Spanish temperament. The great land-
owners do nothing. The State spends a few thousand
pesetas every year ; but at the present rate afforesta-
tion will need hundreds of years, bearing a resem-
blance to that long-desired map of Spain, which is to
be issued in some eleven hundred sections, and of
which from two to three sections appear annually.1
The advantages of irrigation have been amply proved
in Spain, justifying the juxtaposition of water and
gold in Pindar's ode ; but only about a fiftieth of
Spain's total area — and especially the plain of Granada
and the strip of coast of Malaga and Valencia — can at

1 Senor Gasset, Minister of Public Works, now proposes (in a
scheme explained to the Congress on March 9, 1911) to spend
twenty-seven million pesetas on afforestation in ten years.

100 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

present show the immense productiveness due to irri-
gation, combined with the swift-maturing sun of
Spain. There are, of course, immense difficulties, and
not the least are the ignorance and the poverty of
the peasants. Water added to a poor soil will be of
little value if the peasants are not taught artificial
means of enriching the soil, and modern methods of
cultivating it. The extreme poverty of the peasants
would, however, prevent them at present from employ-
ing any but the simplest methods ; in many districts
they mortgage their land in order to be able to sow
their crops, and Spanish farmers are often in the
hands of the usurers. The usurer has been their only
resource in moments of distress, and finally they are
driven to emigrate, leaving their land to the usurer.
A narrow strip of fertile land along the rivers stands
out in contrast to the desolate country beyond. Thus
the Ebro flows through Aragon, among woods of
silver birch and poplars, and plantations of olives and
vines and maize ; but on either side appears the
barren country of perfectly bare reddish or brown
hills of crumbling earth, like great sand-dunes, with-
out a plant, curiously folded and scored by rushing
water, with intricate, abrupt hollows and catacombs.
The villages are the colour of the soil, and at no great
distance are scarcely distinguishable from a bare hill-
side. Or desert plains are thinly covered with grey
thyme, and in the more fertile parts produce dwarfed
vines and corn, so that in autumn one looks across
immense, undivided plains of stubble and yellowing
vineyards to the distant horizon of dim blue hills.

THE DESERT AND THE SOWN 101

The cruel winds1 of Spain blow straight from the
iced mountain ridges, unstemmed by any barrier of
woods. The first snows fall early round Avila and on
the uplands, but in the towns snow at Christmas is
rare. The foreigner sometimes has a capricious wish
to see these wide, tawny plains covered with snow —
apres la plaine blanche une autre plaine blanche,
like the Queen Romayquia, wife of Abenabet, Moorish
King of Seville, who could find no solace in her long-
ing for the sight of snow. The King ordered almond-
trees to be planted all about the city of Cordoba, that
in early spring at least, if not at Christmas, the
Queen might beguile her fancy with the snow-white
almond blossoms.2 But even in Andalucia, towards
the end of December, one may see several compara-
tively low mountain ranges thickly coated with snow,
Stores of firing are then brought down to the villages
from the treeless hills. Further north the vines have

1 Martial, referring to the frequency of winds of Spain, says —

" Debes non aliter timere risum
Quam ventum Spanius."

2 El Conde Lucanor, " Enxemplo 30 : " " . . . el rey Abenabet
de Sevilla era casada con Eomayquia et amabala muy mas que a
cosa del mundo, et iella era muy buena mujer, et los moros han
della muy buenos enxemplos : pero una manera babia que non era
muy buena, esto era, que a las vegadas tomaba algunos antojos a su
voluntad. Et acaescio que un dia, estando en Cordoba en el mes
de febrero, cay6 una nieve, et cuando Romayquia esto vio comenzo
a llorar, et el rey preguntole porque Uoraba, et ella dij6 que porque
nunca la dejaba estar en tierra que bubiese nieve. Et el rey, por le
facer placer, fize poner almendrales por toda la tierra de Cordoba,
porque pues C6rdoba es tan caliente tierra et non nieva y cada auo,
que en el febrero paresciesen los almendrales floridos et le semejasen
nieve, por le facer perder aquel deseo de la nieve."

102 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

been pruned, and the vine-twigs brought in for burn-
ing ; but here the vines have not yet lost their leaves,
and the firing consists of thyme and whin and rose-
mary, mint and lavender and other scented hill-plants.
Troops of donkeys arrive at sunset, with immense,
sweet-smelling loads, that entirely hide the red or
purple tassels and fringes of their harness. The
oranges now gleam in myriads along the eastern
coast; sometimes the icy winds from inland freeze
them, and fires of smouldering straw are burnt round
and in the orange groves, after the wind has ceased,
that a dense smoke may hang about the trees and
warm them. Weeks before Christmas the turroneros
from Jijona, noticeable for their small peaked hats of
black velvet, appear in nearly every city and town of
Spain. In porches or in large bare shops they set
out their layers of white wooden boxes, and samples
of the turron, or almond-paste, which is an essential
part of Spanish Christmas fare. For the time, Jijona,
the grey town in the hills, is deserted, though but a
few weeks ago every house was a busy scene of tur-
ron making, and nailing thin white planks into boxes.
The snow will soon lie deep on the Carrasqueta hill-
range above the town. The almond-trees, whose pink
flowers in February form a solitary belt of colour
between Jijona and the rocky mountains, are now as
bare and grey as the surrounding country. Some of
the inhabitants have gone to the warmer south,
taking the diligencia to Alicante; others have scaled
the steep, winding road past the Barranco de la
Batalla, where once the Cid wrought havoc of the

THE DESERT AND THE SOWN 103

Moors, and now herds of goats feed apparently on
nothing, and have taken train at Alcoy for the cold,
high-lying cities of the north. But not in the northern
uplands only are Spanish winters cruel ; the dehesas
of Anclalucia are equally unprotected, the silent, icy
winds blow subtle and fierce and penetrating over
the undulating hill country round Cordoba, and one
may see shepherd boys, closely muffled in their plaids,
standing frozen and motionless, the sheep pressing
around them and against one another for shelter.

IX

THE COAST OF CATALONIA IN

AUTUMN

A FIRST view of Catalonia from the sea
shows at any rate the stones from which,
according to the proverb, the Catalans
make bread. For great spines of rust-
coloured rock, covered here and there by pines of a
crude green, run to the sea and break off in abrupt
cliffs. In the valleys of these ridges towns and
villages skirt the shore, Rosas, Palamos, San Feliu de
Guixols with its cork industry, and lace-making
Arenys de Mar. Towards Barcelona both soil and
villages become greyer, but Barcelona itself has colour
in plenty. The Spanish and foreign ships in the
harbour, the palm-trees near the quay, above them
the tall white and yellow houses with shutters of
green and brown, and above these again a view of
the great Cathedral — all this, bounded by the purple
mountains, makes the sight of Barcelona from the
sea very picturesque and attractive.

The coast to the south of Barcelona is very fertile.
There are hedges of reeds twenty feet high, of cactus

COAST OF CATALONIA IN AUTUMN 105

and of aloe, aloes of that exquisite blue-green which
is so often the colour of the Mediterranean in Sep-
tember. Through yellowing orchards of magnificent
peaches, of figs and apples in great abundance, come
glimpses of the intense leaden-blue hill-ranges to the
west. The grapes have already for the most part
been gathered for wine, but there are still many vines
that, earlier in the year, are cut back to the ground,
and have the look of blighted potato-plants, and that
now, grown to the size of currant-bushes and unstaked,
are laden with large yellow grapes. Occasionally,
too, one sees tall date-palms and orange-trees.

After Casteldefels the hills are covered with pines,
and the nights, which are warm but have heavy dew,
bring out their scent so strongly that it is at times
almost oppressive. The nights are silent but for the
continual chirping of crickets and the sound of the
unquiet sea. The stars are strangely bright, Sirius
burns large and intense, and Orion nightly stalks the
sky in all his glory till the sun catches him in mid-
heaven. The sea is alive with phosphorus, and far
out are seen the lights of fishing-boats, while on land
the glow-worms are almost as many as the stars.
The orange and purple sunrises and sunsets of pink
and amethyst are very lovely, and the sails of the
fishing-boats continue white, and the sea retains its
blue for some time after the light of the after-glow
is gone. A little further south the cliffs are covered
with dwarf palms, rosemary in flower, and other
shrubs. The road here is good, but one meets no
pedestrians, for a path along the railway is the

106 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

accepted thoroughfare between village and village in
spite of the notices that forbid its use. The men
for the most part wear a black peaked cap, a long
blouse, and trousers of brown or blue. The sash is
nearly always black and is worn wide, the sandals
have a tip and heel covering only, with fastenings of
leather or black cloth from the tip. The women wear
handkerchiefs that entirely cover the head. The
predominant colours are blue and black. A kilo-
metre or more before wine-makino; Sitges the road is
bounded by rough terraces of stone with vines and
dark green carob-trees. A succession of terraces on
the one side runs far up the hills, and on the other
the rude-walled vineyards stretch to the edge of the
sea. Sitges, a village of less than four thousand
inhabitants, is prettily placed, its octagonal-towered
church rising from a rock in the sea. A few kilo-
metres further Villanueva y Geltru is but a fairly
large and rather ordinary provincial town, though it
has its picturesque corners, with its houses washed
in various shades of blue, pink, green, or yellow, and
views of vineyard country appearing at the end of
many of its long, straight streets. After Villanueva
the hills recede further inland, and there is a little
more flat country, but it is occupied largely by great
marshes, loud with the croaking of frogs.

It is not till one reaches Roda and Creixell that
any villages have a really Spanish, or rather Castilian,
look. Creixell, especially, with its massive church
and great square building of stone standing haughtily
on a hill of wall-terraces sprinkled with carob-trees,

COAST OF CATALONIA IN AUTUMN 107

and with its houses the colour of the soil, has all the
air of a little Toledo. Early on an autumn morning
it may be seen reflected, with every house and window,
in a blue lagoon hundreds of yards from the village
and separated by sandbanks from the sea. The
olives and vineyards now extend to the shore, and
above San Vicente great white country-houses stand
among orchards and olives. After Creixell there are
but two villages. Torredenbarra and Altafulla, before
Tarragona, the second coast-town of Catalonia. Here,
indeed, the sun beats with a fiery strength; here,
indeed, the Mediterranean is " crystalline," and " the
lightning of the noon-tide ocean flashes." Here is
excellent firm sand for bathing and, swimming far
out, the sun is still seen shining through the trans-
parent water on the waved sand below. At the end
of September the season is over, yet the days are still
almost too hot, and the deep blue of the bay and the
long purple line of hills to the north-west are inde-
scribably beautiful. Tarragona, the favoured city of the
Romans, is the possessor of many noble Roman ruins,
and wonderful Cyclopean walls, and its outline, seen
against the sky from the road leading to Tortosa, is
one of the most magnificent in Spain. The town and
its neighbourhood, as well as the whole coast of
Catalonia is, perhaps, not as well known as it deserves.
In autumn, if the days and even the nights are hot,
there is always a refreshing coolness in the early
mornings ; the people are, as a rule, pleasant and
courteous ; in some villages many speak Catalan only,
and at times, catching a word here and there, one
may think oneself to be in Italy.

X
AN EASTERN VILLAGE

THERE is no cloud in the clear March sky,
filled with radiant light. Beyond the
dark green of orange-trees and grey
olives lies the sea, a faint line of blue.
And, to the west, the mountains of bare rock are
faintly purple, looking frail and brittle in their
clear but distant outlines. A herd of goats passes
slowly down a wide river-bed of smooth white
stones, with no shred or vestige of water. Lines
of aloes and tall reeds grow along its banks, and
on either side peasants dressed in black are at
work in the fields, ploughing with single mules
between the brown stems of vines recently pruned,
or pruning the orange-trees and olives. Bundles
of vine and olive twigs lie ready to be carted to the
village for fuel. Women in dresses of white and
pink and scarlet are hoeing the green corn. The pear
and peach-trees are in flower, and the almond-trees
fully arrayed in freshest green. At intervals, wells
or norias explain the green fresh look of the country,
so different from the burnt desolation of the waterless

AN EASTERN VILLAGE 109

regions further north. For Oropesa, the neighbouring
village, is but some sixty miles north of Valencia,
and is bordered on the one side by the full fertility
of the Valencian plain, though on the other it is
surrounded by barren hills. In each noria a long
crooked branch forms the handle to the iron wheel
and to this a mule is tied, and as the mule turns, the
wheel revolves with a slow clinking sound, and the
long earthenware jars (arcaduces) attached to the
wheel gush water into a trough and so by small
channels of dry earth into the fields of brown and
reddish soil. A path leads through green fields and
clumps of orange-trees to the village. In some fields
further south the last oranges have been gathered,
and thousands of pearl-shaped buds tell that the trees
before long will be covered with a glistening snow of
scented blossoms. But in many the oranges still reign
resplendent: on a grey day they stand out with
more vivid distinctness than when the sun blurs
them in a luminous haze, leaving them clearly visible
only in the level light of its rising or its setting.
The trees are bowed with fruit, and the laden
branches are propped up from the ground. The
thronging oranges glow in myriad spheres of gold,
here and there lie golden mounds of gathered oranges,
and below the trees the ground is a strewn pavement
of gold. On every side beneath the trees may be
seen a magic land of myriad golden lamps; single
or in trefoils and clusters of seven and ten and
twenty, the oranges hang within a few inches of the
ground. Hundreds of yards away through intervals

110 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

of trees appears the same foison of gleaming fruit,
and the air is all scented with oranges. From time
to time a light wind blows beneath the trees, and
the twigs with their burdens of crowding: oranges
sway heavily to and fro, like slowly swung censers
of burning gold. But near Oropesa the oranges are
comparatively few. The village is built on a steep
precipitous hill of grey rock, crowned by the ruinous
walls of a great castle. The houses clamber roof
over roof, in ragged disarray up the rock. They are
of yellowish-brown stone with rough cement, and
mostly innocent of glass, but have a touch of white-
wash in front, so that they wear shining morning faces
to the rising sun. In the mistless radiant mornings
the village stands out clearly, its sharp rock rising
sheer from the plain. The sea beyond is silver, and
on the other side every wrinkle in the rocks of the
grey mountains is distinctly visible. There is no
sound but the occasional voices of children, the clink
and clang of a forge-hammer, the crowing of a cock, or
a faint crystal crash of waves breaking ; but from time
to time there is a dry rumour of wheels, and the cry
of a man to his mule as he passes down the road in
his cart. Wrapped in their plaids against the keen
morning air, the peasants pass leisurely in carts and
on mules to work in the fields until the evening.
At dusk the slow procession returns, with many a
greeting and bona nit and smiles of sunburnt
wrinkled faces. Thin lines of blue smoke go up
from swiftly flaring fires of vine twigs and rosemary
and dry plants gathered from the hills, and an hour or

AN EASTERN VILLAGE 111

two hours later Oropesa is given over to sleep and the
silence of the stars, broken only by the deep rhythmic
cry of the sereno calling the hours. To the south a
road goes up through grey rocky hills with thyme
and dwarf-palms and cistus. The bare smooth rocks
have a metallic ring, and there is no sign of life save
for a herd of goats far above, the goat-herd with his
plaid and wide felt hat clearly outlined on the sky,
and the sound of his flute distinct in the solitude of
the hills, utterly silent save for the silver tinkling of
goat-bells. No water can remain on these rocky
hills, it pours immediately away to the plains beyond,
where, by a stream bed barely a yard wide, a pillar
tells of those who perished there in 1850, in "the
cliligencia carried away by the waters of the torrent."
Though Oropesa now has a railway station, the
diligencias still ply between it and Castellon and
Torreblanca, and it might be fifty miles from any
railway, so primitive and self-centred is its life.
Occasionally comes a sunless morning with a quiet
grey sky, rare on the east coast of Spain except in
the days of early spring. The sea lies motionless
and grey, with pale reflections of light in coils and
patches of gold. So still is the air that the quiet
piping of birds among the olives falls like a stone
in hushed waters. As the clay advances the
mountains, which earlier were mingled and lost in
the grey of the sky, grow more distinct, till towards
sunset every line and crevice in their sharp ranges
becomes marked, and the overhanging mist of cloud
melts away into the grey of evening, sprinkled with
the gold-dust of the stars.

XI
OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN

THE Mediterranean off the coast of Spain
is not always calm. Sometimes the
east wind, the Llevant, lashes the waves
to fury, and the shores along the villages
and towns are black with lines of fishing-boats that
dare not put out to sea. But for weeks together it is
" lulled in the coil of its crystalline streams," and the
sun rises and sets across a silken plain of blue. In
such weather a journey along the coast has a wonder-
ful freshness and a fascinating charm. Again and
again the traveller recalls the magic of those lines of
the old romance :

" Quien hubiese tal ventura,
Sobre las aguas del mar,
Como hubo el conde Arnaldos,
La manana de San Juan 1 "

" Oh for a chance as happy,
Where the deep sea waters swell,
As on the morn of St. John's Day,
Count Arnaldos bofel," etc.

By St. John's Day, however, the sun flashes its rays
too fiercely, and it is in late spring or early autumn

OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN 113

that the voyage is most enjoyable. A land journey
can give no idea of the loveliness of these coasts, and
towns such as Alicante and Almeria lose much of
their beauty if deprived of their background of moun-
tains, which can only be seen fully out at sea. The
sea and sky are unfailingly beautiful, and the life of
the ports, full of colour and movement, never loses
its interest. Almeria, fallen from its ancient great-
ness, is yet active in its " purple-shadowed bay," 1 and
exports every year two million barrels, a hundred
million pounds, of grapes, chiefly to America and
England. Torrevieja, further north, is a small town
or village of some seven thousand inhabitants, at
which steamers touch to take in a cargo of salt, but
which the tourist, on his way from Elche to Murcia,
rarely turns aside to visit. It has a thoroughly
African look, with its flat-roofed, grey-white houses
on a bare, level strip of sandy coast, with no trees
except palms, that stand conspicuous like trees of the
desert; the sand in places is thinly covered with
grass, of lightest, almost yellow, green. To the left,
seen from the sea, is a long line of gleaming salt,
drawn from the sea-water by evaporation under the
summer sun, and now ready to be exported. Beyond
the line of salt is a distant range of bare mountains,
faintly purple. The town has one or two small
towers, four factory chimneys, and half a dozen round
mills, with arms as slender as the cranes on the

» George Eliot, " The Spanish Gypsy." The purple shadows are
the effect of dark patches of rock seen through the transparent blue
water.

H

114 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

loading steamers in the harbour. A continual rosary
of barges, yellow, white, green, or black, carries the salt
across the bay. The heavy load weighs the barge
to the water's edge, and the glistening white salt
seems to float on the blue surface. In the barge, at
either end, go as many as twenty or even thirty men,
some sitting rowing, others facing them and standing
to row, and others punting with their poles of im-
mense length that taper away at the top to the slight
girth of a fishing: rod. The shirts of the men, mauve,
pink, white, red, or purple, their light blue or black
coats, red sashes, trousers of velvet or velvet corduroy
of many shades, from bright yellow to dark brown,
the long shining yellow punt poles, and the white
pyramids of salt on the sea of sapphire, combine to
form a strange and beautiful sight. The empty
barges return high in the water, with little mounds
of salt left along their ledges. At midday the houses
seem to faint and grow indistinct, the mountains fade
to a hardly perceptible outline, only the salt reflects
the sun in every facet of its countless grains, and
glitters whiter than snow. In the sunset the lines
resume their sharpness, and the mountains are grey
or blue-grey or intense leaden blue or purple, accord-
ing to their distances. The Murcian sky is famous
for its clear serenity, and the sunsets and sunrises are
of surpassing fairness. Alicante, too, which is nearer
to Murcia than to Valencia, has a wonderful sky and
a wonderful sea, and here, too, the "sunrise is a
glorious birth." " Alicante aux clochers mele les
minarets," says Victor Hugo in one of the poems of

OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN 115

" Les Orientales," and from the sea Alicante has an
Oriental look, with its lines of palms, stories of flat
roofs, and bare background of hills and mountains.
But it is at evening that Alicante is one of the most
beautiful cities in the world. The lights shine softly
through the four lines of palm-trees along the Paseo
de los Martires, and are reflected across the water;
in the harbour the last radiance of evening sets the
tracery of masts and cranes and rigging in clear relief.
To the west the sea is already dark, almost wine-
coloured, the oivoip of the Greeks, but in the east it
is a most exquisite blue, a blue that seems to be a
transparent surface of turquoise covering a layer of
white chalk. The eastern horizon is faintly purple,
and against it the sails of a fleet of fishing-boats are
whiter than at any other time, and gleam long after
the sun has set. Later the sea catches for an instant
the faint purple of the sky, the sky loses its colour,
and finally a mistiness of softest grey merges them
together, so that one may no longer distinguish where
the sky ceases or the sea begins. On the rocks of
the coast the waves at night break, filled with phos-
phorus, in a luminous spray, " like light dissolved in
star showers thrown." The low line of pale lights
along El Grao, Valencia's harbour, if approached at
night, has a look, from some distance at sea, of such
a phosphorus wave. By day the harbour is seen to
be a forest of masts, and far away the towers of
Valencia, round the tall Miguelete, appear as numerous,
and in the distance almost as slender as the masts of
the harbour : " les clochers de ses trois cents dglises."

116 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Along the coast of the Huerta, especially to the south
of Valencia, glisten a number of snow-white pyramids,
that seem at first to be more salt, having the exact
look of the mounds that lie along the bay of Cadiz.
They are the whitewashed, triangular fronts of the
peasants' thatched cottages or barracas, standing in
the fertile plain, " Spain's Orchard."

One of the most lovely and original sights along
the whole coast is that of the high range of bare,
treeless mountains south of Cartagena, falling sheer
into the sea, a delicate purple above the light blue
water. There is not the merest rim of coast, in fact
the sea flows round the mountains' flanks, and they
continue far out from the land, their tops occasionally
appearing as small islands.

But especially will the traveller who has the happy
chance to find himself at dawn of a cloudless day in
a boat an hour west of Almeria — especially then will
he be ready to repeat the lines :

" Quien hubiese tal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar."

A slight gleam in the east warns the moon that
its reign of quiet light is to finish, and begins the
long prelude of day. Above a dark line of sea
a faint orange creeps into the sky, deepening to
orange-purple, and soon fringing oft* in pale yellow,
saffron, and daffodil. Then, later, above this, widens
a space of clearest green, and at last the body of the
sky changes from grey to a light blue. In the west
all is still grey, as with a soft woof of hanging mists.

OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN 117

The sails of a boat going out to sea are white in the
first glow of dawn, and the gently swelling sea east-
wards reflects the light in level gleams of gold, like
smooth, burnished meadows of buttercups. Then the
sun rises, red-orange, on a cloudless sea line, the sea
becomes light blue, and along the rest of the horizon
lie spaces of pearl and opal, while in the east a dim,
silver moon fades slowly. The scene is of such
enchanting loveliness, like the birth of a new world,
that if the Sierra Nevada chances to be for the most
part hidden in a long cloud of mist, the traveller
scarcely notices one or two peaks that seem to be
floating snow-white clouds. Then the mist of cloud
melts away, and, one by one, the snow summits
appear, till the whole immense range stands bare,
looking incredibly high in a heaven of clear, faint
green. It is a sight to make men hold their breath.
The ship, night's shadows scarce driven from her
deck, passes slowly, almost noiselessly through the
water as if she, too, understood that here is some
enchanted country. The view of the Sierra Nevada
from Granada, lovely as it is, gives no hi nt of a sight
so incomparable as this. The range is of such vast
length, the snow is so deep and soft. Long, almost
level lines, huge, abrupt crags, gently sloping gullies,
smooth, pyramid-shaped peaks, shelves and pinnacles,
crevices and ledges, are all entirely wrapped in deep,
much-sunned snow, without a break. Each look, after
turning for a moment to the grey western horizon
or the waving, crystalline surface of blue sea, brings
a new wonder and a fresh surprise ; so marvellous

118 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

is the radiance of white appearing in the full glow
from the east, and such is the infinite clearness
and subtlety of the outlines on a sky varying from
blue-grey to transparent green. The long massive
range, seen from some distance out at sea, gives the
impression of a height of twenty thousand feet,
whereas from Granada it is difficult to realize that
the highest peak is over eleven thousand. Below the
snow-line, a high range of bare grey-purple mountains
seems to sink into the sea, though there is, in fact, a
line of level coast. Far or near no tree is to be seen ;
a white lighthouse stands on the coast, and on the
silken blue sea gleams an occasional white sail or the
flash of a seagull's wing. As the sun rises higher
the softly folding mountains beneath thei Sierra
Nevada grow more purple above the sea, and the
shadows of their dimpling hollows blacken. Above,
the wide, smooth spaces and the deep ravines present
their broad surplice of glistening white to the sun
without a shadow. It is all unimaginably lovely,
with a breathless purity of things primeval —

" Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag."

This and other hours of delight during a coasting

voyage in the Spanish Mediterranean are not soon

forgotten, and, though they cannot be translated into

words —

"They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude."

The voyage may be prolonged on the south coast,

OFF THE EAST COAST OF SPAIN 119

and, from the time when, on his left, Tarifa lies along
the sea, like a line of melting snow under smoothly-
moulded hills of green, and, on the right, Tangiers
shows its white houses indistinctly beneath the bare,
grey mountains of Africa, to the time when at Port
Bou he bids farewell to the Catalan coast and to
Spain, the traveller will not have a dull or unenjoy-
able moment ; if only the gods send him propitious,
cloudless days —

" Quien hubiese fcal ventura
Sobre las aguas del mar ! "

XII
THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS

IT was a cloudless day of November. The
Cathedral of Valencia stood grey against a
sky of soft blue. In the Plaza de la Con-
stitucion the sun shone on the central
fountain and marked in dark lines the shadows of
the houses and the Cathedral. From the great
" Door of the Apostles " came a smell of incense as
people went out and in. Surmounted by its large
rose-window, the doorway has a worn and ancient
air, and the plants growing here and there in the
wall add to its look of venerable splendour. Some
of the apostles stand there headless, some without
arms, some mere trunks of stone. Above, the tall
Miguelete tower rises conspicuous here, as it is
conspicuous far and wide across the Valencian plain.
A few priests passed, a few carts drawn by long
strings of mules, a newspaper-seller cried the Heraldo
de Madrid, and some peasants in black or blue-grey
groups talked together, leaning on their sticks.
Shortly after eleven a long, green sofa was set up
on the pavement immediately in front of the

THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS 121

Cathedral door, and a narrow space round it was
enclosed with an iron railing. Sofa and railing,
carried across the street in sections, bore the inscrip-
tion Tribunal de las Aguas. For it was Thursday,
the meeting-day of the tribunal which judges dis-
putes arising from the irrigation of the Huerta.

To the peasant of the Valencian Huerta loss of
water for his land means starvation, and the hours
at which each is allowed to draw off water from the
narrow channels that cross his land are carefully
regulated. If one takes water out of his turn the
fields of another must suffer, and the case must be
brought before the judges sitting in weekly council.
Against their sentence there is no protest or appeal ;
it is absolutely final, and though there must be cases
of injustice, the peasants are very proud of their
tribunal. There is no writing — the cases are not
even recorded — the matter is decided on the spot and
in the open air between man and man ; there are no
clerks or advocates ; no table, ink, or papers to con-
fuse the simple;1 no fees or anxious delays, and the
judges, moreover, chosen by and from the peasants
themselves, thoroughly understand the questions
brought before them. It is a strange sight, the
sitting of this all-powerful institution, centuries old,
in the Plaza de la Constitucion, in the twentieth
century. There is a dignified simplicity about it, a

1 " Papel y tinta y poca jtisticia, paper, ink, and little
justice," say the people, in one of their proverbs. They feel that,
in Spain, if revenge is a kind of wild justice, so too frequently
is justice.

122 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

lack of display which is imposing. The peasants
have a conscious pride in being able to arrange their
own affairs without interference of the men of learn-
ing, just as they are ready to settle their more private
quarrels without recourse to the law. The man who
has been stabbed in a quarrel will conceal the name
of his assailant from the police, always reserving for
himself the pleasure of taking vengeance later on.
The character of the peasants of the Huerta is indeed
a mixture of haughtiness and cunning, of simplicity
and shrewdness, and the word that best describes
them is the Spanish socarroneria — a certain malicious
humour.1 Living isolated in the vast open plain, they
form a community apart, and resent external interfer-
ence. Their tribunal is entirely primitive and rustic ;
in all its years of city life it has adopted none of the
city's ways, and has not even the shelter of a roof.

In the present instance there was but a single
question to be settled, and the proceedings lasted less
than five minutes, passing all but unnoticed. At about
a quarter to twelve the judges, five in number, and
dressed in black as ordinary peasants, walked slowly
into the enclosure and occupied their places on the
official sofa, taking off' their black felt hats. The
full body of the judges is seven, chosen from different
districts to represent the principal canals of irrigation.
Another peasant, officer of the tribunal (on his cap is
written A. de T. Aguas, the alguacil, that is, of the
Tribunal of Waters), standing at the small gate in the

1 Barretti's Dictionary (edition of 1778) quaintly renders
socarrdn as " a crafty, subtle fellow ; an arch wag."

THE JUDGING OF THE WATERS 123

railing, formally declared the tribunal open : S' obri
el tribunal are the consecrated words. He then
introduced the plaintiff and defendant, who stood
bareheaded and without their sticks at half a yard's
distance from the judges. After each had stated his
case — and any interruption is rigorously fined — one
of the judges at once passed sentence. The verdict
was against the old man, and he turned without
a word to leave the enclosure. His wife, however,
without the railing, though he put his finger to his
lips to silence her, was not to be overawed, and in a
shrill torrent of words reproached the judges as they
filed solemnly into the Plaza. The Tribunal de las
Aguas was closed; the judges dispersed to their
silent fields, to meet again in the rattle and clamour
of the crowded city on the following Thursday.
Every Thursday throughout the year the plain green
sofa and circular railing are brought out in sections,
and the judges make their appearance in the Plaza.
They do not always enter the enclosure, for sometimes
there is no dispute pending, or the disputants have
come to an agreement in the Plaza without recourse
to the tribunal, and when the clock strikes twelve,
railing and sofa are carried back. The judges help to
bring about a settlement, and this perhaps explains
that their official verdicts are given instantaneously,
with no pause for thought or consultation ; they have
no doubt heard every detail of the case and come to a
decision beforehand.

Readers of Don Vicente Blasco Ibaiiez' gloomy but
delightful novel, "LaBarraca/' will remember the scene

124 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

at the " Door of the Apostles " when Batiste, unable
to check his indignation at the unjust charge brought
against him, is fined for his excited interruptions and
fined too for the misdeed which he had not committed.
But as a rule the scene is a quiet and almost a
solemn one. The tribunal has the sanctity of years ;
the peasant respects an institution which was the
same in his father's time and in his grandfather's,
and in that of his ancestors five centuries ago. The
judges who before and after are simple peasants, are,
for the moment invested with the power of settling
matters of vital importance; for disregarding the
sentence of the tribunal they may deprive a man
entirely of his right of water, and so render him
and his family penniless. They represent the whole
Huerta, embodying alike its independent spirit and
its conservative traditions. A few minutes after the
judges have risen, and sometimes before the Cathedral
clock has struck twelve, sofa and railing have dis-
appeared, and it is hard to realize that the time-
honoured Judging of the Waters, so primitive and
impressive, has actually been held in this city of two
hundred thousand inhabitants, and in this paved
square where now there are but few wayfarers, and
the central fountain flows and trickles in silence.

XIII
SEVILLE IN WINTER

IT is in spring, from March to May, that Seville
is chiefly visited ; the warm air and hot sun,
the orange-trees in flower, the great religious
festivals, the famous bull-fights, attract a host
of foreigners, and the city has an animation unwonted
even in the gay and lively capital of Andalucia. In
winter Seville has a quieter, but perhaps not less
potent charm. Winter often brings with it a succes-
sion of cool clear days, when the sky is of a serene,
almost transparent blue, with golden sunsets. The
white lines of flat-roofed houses seen against the blue
of the evening sky have the soft light and colouring
of opals, while the distant hills of the horizon are
faintly purple. On these still days the motionless
river reflects the lines of leafless silver birch and
yellow tamarisks in all the tracery of their slender
branches. A few yards further from the bank on
either side thousands of dark orange-trees are hung
with gleaming fruit, circling the city with a fringe of
lamps. Above and through the trees, now bare and
grey, of the Paseo de las Delicias show the various

126 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

greens of the tall eucalyptus-trees and palms, the
orange-trees and cypresses of the Santelmo gardens.
On the quay lie immense mounds of oranges ready to
be packed : the hot sun fills the air with their scent,
children make flying attacks and retire precipitately
with an orange apiece, while an occasional beggar also
receives his dole from the apparently inexhaustible
store. In the ever-crowded Calle de las Sierpes small
open stalls display fresh violets and magnificent car-
nations and roses, and in some gardens one may see
roses and geraniums in flower. In the lovely gardens
of the Alcazar the sun draws a deliciously mingled
scent from the box-hedges, myrtles and oranges.

Occasionally — still in unclouded weather — the
wind is cold and piercing and all go muffled to the
eyes, the men in their capas, the women with long
shawls. In the Patio de los Naranjos, beneath the
trees laden with oranges, the wind sweeps across the
pavement of rough bricks, intergrown with grass and
the duller green of mosses, and rattles the fallen leaves
in lines and circles. Far above, the great Giralda
tower stands pink and creamy grey in the clear winter
sky. By the Gate of Pardon, in a corner of hot sun
and sheltered from the wind, a few beggars sit warm-
ing themselves and watching with Oriental patience
and immobility. The streets are mostly too narrow
to let in the sun, but in the plazas and any open space
men are seen basking in sunshine, tomando el sol.
Alone: the bridge that leads to the suburb of Triana
the seats on both sides are crowded. Triana, better
than Seville, corresponds to Cervantes' description of

SEVILLE IN WINTER 127

a city where adventures are to be met at every street
corner, and Triana supplies an army of loiterers whose
life's mission in winter is to " take the sun."

On the eve of high festivals in winter, such as the
Epiphany, it is already growing dark when services
are held, and the vast Cathedral is faintly lit with
hundreds of candles and dim hanging lamps, though
the last daylight still lingers awhile in the deep reds
and purples, green, orange, and every colour of the
windows overhead. There is no procession of the
Three Kings through the city ; at Alcoy, in the pro-
vince of Valencia, the Three Kings come riding, laden
with presents, into the town from beyond the grey
mountains that surround it, and half the population
goes out to meet them, but Seville is too " civilized "
for this.

Even in Seville not all the winter days are cloud-
less and serene. On some of them the sky is a
uniform grey, and the rain falls unceasingly till the
centre of the narrower, unevenly cobbled streets,
raised at either side and without a pavement, becomes
a running stream. But when the Andalusian sun
reappears, the houses have an added freshness in their
glowing white, or in their coats of faint green or
red, yellow or purple (though even these usually have
a line of white along the roof), and in the air is a
feeling of spring. There is an ancient Andalusian
song that makes March say to January —

i" Con tres dlas que me quedan
Y tres que me preste mi compadre Abril
He de poner tus ovejas
Que te acordaras de mi."

128 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

(With the three days that are left me and three lent
me by my friend April, I will put your sheep in such
a plight that you will remember me.) This is the
Cumbrian : —

" March said to Aperill
• I see three haggs [sheep] upon a hill.
And if you will lend me dayes three
I'll find a way to make them dee.' "

But the rigour of the days that follow in Cumberland
has no place or parallel in the low-lying districts of
Andalucia : —

" The first of them was wind and weet,
The second of them was snaw and sleet,
The third of them was sic a freeze
It froze the birds' nebs to the trees :
When the three days were past and gane
The three silly haggs came hirpling hame."

At Seville a few weeks after the Day of the
Kings winter is really over: in February the sky
has an intenser blue, and with the longer sunshine
the warmth increases. The spring days follow in
their matchless splendour, till finally the sun's fiery
heat drives all who can leave the city to the cooler
refuse of the sea or the hills.

XIV
FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP

IN winter Seville's sky is sometimes for weeks
entirely cloudless. Day after day opens and
dies peacefully away like a perfect flower ;
or, if a strong cold wind drives across the
day, it still blows in a heaven of limitless clear blue.
But in early spring the sky is often veiled in a
floating canopy of grey, or one may watch the white
masses of clouds thin and melt on the blue. And
the blue is no longer fixed, distant, and serene ; even
when apparently clear it has a vague movement of
dissolving mists, an intangible white softness inter-
lacing it. It is this quality of the sky, harmonizing
so well with the soft lines and delicate colours of the
city, that gives to Seville in spring its unfailing charm.
Especially is that charm felt in the hour when men's
cigarettes begin to glow and dot the streets with tiny
fire-flies, distinct as the white flowers worn by the
women in their hair. The deep-red carnations and
dark violets of the open flower-stalls fade into
shadow ; the light greens, lilacs, yellows, browns, and
blues of the houses take a greyer tinge. The last

I

130 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

sunshine throws its thinner radiance along the white
lines of flat roofs that stand out in many levels
and angles on the blue or blue-and-white sky, and
the effect is of pearls and opals, not the flash of
polished opals, but, as it were, blue veins of opal in
white chalk. The west is filled with a level radiance
of pure gold, and presently the eastern sky also
changes from blue to a faint golden grey. One by
one the hanging street lamps begin to shed their
soft glow of white light, and overhead the first stars
shine faintly and vanish and reappear. The bells of
goats and the mellower note of cowbells are heard as
they go their evening round to be milked, driven by
a boy astride his donkey, or by an old man with
faded-pink umbrella ; or a donkey passes laden with
oranges, the fruit's gold gleaming through the twilight
afterglow from between the netting of the panniers.
A breath of country air invades the city ; the day's
work is ended, and perhaps from some church or
convent you may hear " a distant bell that seems to
mourn the dying of the day " :

" Squilla di lontano
Che paia '1 giorno piangcr che si muore."

The swift Southern twilight soon dies, but this
short hour more than any other embodies the magic
of a Seville spring. For Seville at other times is " a
city full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city."
It wakes to a discordant music of many street cries.
All kinds of wares are hawked shrilly, with loud
shouts, or slow, dirge-like chants. Later in the day
come the more melodious cries of " Oranges ! Water !

FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP 131

Violets! Carnations! — / Que buenas naranjas ! Agua,
quien'quiere agua ! Violetas ! Glctveles ! " But to the
flat brick-paved housetops, surrounded with walls
of different height, from three to twenty feet, all
whitewashed to their level tops, these sounds of the
street come faintly. The rattle of wheels over the
cobbles is deadened, the bells of slowly driven cows
and goats chime distantly ; sometimes one hears the
intricate whistle of the knife-grinder, or a barrel-
organ plays an interminable dance to the clacking of
castanets, that fascinates by its ceaseless repetition.
But the sounds are vague and muffled, without harsh-
ness or stridency, and here reigns more uninterrupted
quiet than in the cool marble patios below, with the
frequent goings out and in through the door's iron
reja. On the walls or in the line of shade beneath
them stand rows of plants — roses, geraniums, helio-
trope, and especially carnations. From here the
street sellers fill their open stalls and baskets with
the huge carnations of spring, the smaller early
carnations coming chiefly from Malaga. And the
carnations never look more beautiful than seen, dark
red or pink or yellow, against these walls of glisten-
ing white ; one is fain to call them by their German
or " soft Spanish name " — Nelken, claveles. The sun
rising lights up the housetops so ;that they gleam
like snow between the dark spaces of bronze or green
or blue glazed tiles, slender-springing towers, and
infrequent roofs, covered thickly in spring with grass,
like small fields. Or on a night of moon the city has
a phantom look of whited sepulchres, and if no moon

132 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

looks round her with delight when the heavens are
bare, there is an uninterrupted view o£ stars in the
whole sky, as from a ship's deck. At midday, when
the sun is all fire and narrows the lines of shadow to
mere rims of black, one may not look for more than
an instant across the glaring radiance of white. In
the morning there is an exquisite freshness. Little
smoke rises from the houses — only an occasional tiny
wraith of grey — but, beyond, a dense line goes up
from the Cartuja factory of azulejos, and hangs
black-purple on the blue sky — the morning sky
streaked with waving outdrawn wisps of white mist-
like cloud. There is a flapping of pigeons' wings as
they flutter from wall to wall, and the twittering of
innumerable sparrows. The hours are marked by
the crystal striking of many clocks that are heard
only dim and intermittently from below in the street
traffic. But it is at evening that the housetop has
an almost magical charm, when the sun has set in a
sky of delicate gold, and in the east long thin lines of
white and faint purple cloud lie across a sky of lightest
blue. Then the flowers along the wall give out all
their scent. Swallows whirl and swerve far overhead
or lightly skim the hundred levels of whitewashed
turret and wall. The claveles fade slowly in the
growing dusk ; the wide, uneven plain of glowing
walls gradually becomes indistinct and blurred ;
finally the sky, too, is moulded to a perfect symmetry
of grey, and perhaps an immense orange-coloured moon
climbs slowly above the city. Seville is lovely in winter,
when the sky is a cold, serene blue, and night by night

FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP 133

the stars glint and glitter ; lovely in spring, when
everywhere, in roof and patio and garden, is a triumph
of green, when the oranges still hang on the orange-
trees in flower — like yellow crocuses peering from the
snow — and the corn is already high in the olives
beyond the river ; lovely in summer, when the greens
are parched and shrivelled, and a hot wind blows
heavily across the fainting housetops, or in nights of
sultry stillness the intense glow from many a lighted
patio falls across the velvet darkness of the narrow
streets. Lovely at all times, but never more lovely
than in the temperate days of spring, when a hundred
bells are ringing for the Feast of Resurrection, and the
flowers from countless roofs are gathered for the fete ;
when, in scenes of fairy magic, the slow pasos move
with their myriad candles burning through the twi-
light, along the crowded streets and plazas to the
Cathedral, while still peacefully above its Court of
Oranges the tall Giralda looks across the city that
hems it in, to the wide dehesas of Andalucia, to the
green fields and olive-covered hills beyond the gently
flowing Guadalquivir, and to the distant line of the
Sierra Morena.

XV
FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCIA

NOT one perhaps in a hundred of those
who visit Seville and Granada sees
more than a glimpse of the beautiful
country and curious villages of Anda-
lucia ; yet there is much pleasure and interest to be
had from a journey through all this region. In
February an early start with the sun will enable the
traveller on horseback or on foot to accomplish a fair
day's journey, since the sun has not yet begun to burn
and force him to rest for some six central hours of
the day, as later in the year. And the outlines on
every side are exquisitely clear, the sky usually cloud-
less, and streams flow where later there will be but
dry channels. In parts the fields and roadside spaces
are blue and purple with dwarf-irises (the peasants
call them simply lirios, lilies), and the almond-trees
are in flower ; and at no time of the year is there a
greater and more delightful contrast between spring
in the valley and winter on the hills. Near Seville
the immense plains stretch interminably to the faint
mountains, brown and dull-green pastures of heather

FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCIA 135

and dwarf-palm, flecked with silver-white streaks of
water ; herds of cattle, glossy black with white horns,
pigs, horses, and great flocks of sheep graze there.
Or the country is gently undulating like Sussex
downs, but with soi'tlier-moulded outlines and a
horizon of faint blue mountains, in February ex-
quisitely distinct in faintness. A village often entirely
covers one of the small hills, not a house venturing
forward to form an outskirt, but all clustered and
compact. Steep, perfectly straight streets of sharp
narrow cobbles, without side pavements, run up to the
church at the top through rows of low, whitewashed
houses, of a single storey and of a dazzling whiteness.
At evening the labourers come in from the far distant
fields in a continuous line, on foot or on mules and
donkeys, and children go out to meet them and are
given a ride back into the village. Sometimes their
return is of several kilometres, over deep earthy or
stony paths, and, with their gleaming mattocks
(pioches, azadones) over their shoulders, they are now
to be seen clearly outlined on the evening sky, and
now are lost from view in one of the many hollows
of the hills. Far and near there is no tree, " neither
bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all,"
and the winds seem to have sifted and moulded the
hills into softly folding mounds and hollows. In
February the winds still blow occasionally with icy
breath, and you will meet men on crimson and
magenta-tasselled mules and donkeys, closely wrapped
in old-fashioned capas of brown, only their eyes
visible. On the road there are few travellers —

136 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

charcoal-burners coming down with troops of laden
donkeys from the hills, or a slow cart drawn by a
string of mules, the driver lazily asleep, and the reins
appearing from between the soles of his sandals,1
or a troop of gipsies, or orange sellers with the pan-
niers of their mules brimmed with oranges, now
selling at six reales, a little over a shilling, the
hundred. Sometimes the country is all grey-pinched
and icy, and but a little further (as near snow-white
Arcos de la Frontera) are great hedges of shrubs and
aloes and brambles and cactus, with a sound of bees,
and hovering white and yellow butterflies, and wide
spaces of tall branched flowers of asphodel and grey
scented rosemary. Or in a corner of windswept hills
you may find a sheltered huerta with thick hedge of
tall black cypresses ; the oranges crowd the trees
with gold, and the almond-trees shed across the dusty
road a thick carpet of broken flowers, pink and white.
To Grazalema leads only a steep and narrow foot-path
after one has left the road not far from Algodonales
(pronounced by the peasants in a torrent of vowels
Aooae) and crossed the river Guadalete. In the
valley the oranges gleam in myriads, and the hills
immediately above are coloured with a continuous
spray of almond-trees in flower, entirely covering

1 On the road from Tortosa to Valencia there is a stone cross
with the pathetic, ill-spelt inscription : " Aqui muri6 instantanea-
rnente al tirarse del carro por habersele desembocado el mulo
Dominco Cugat Jardi el 30 agosto de 1894. R.I.P. Carrateros ya
veis lo que paso este infelis." " Carters, you see what happened to
this unhappy man." But the carters throughout Spain continue
to sleep away the long hours of the road.

FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCIA 137

their sides, and sometimes crowning them in triumph.
And far above, over woods of cork and evergreen
oak from which rise frail blue lines of smoke from
charcoal-burners' fires, appear two or three peaks of
snow clear against a pale blue sky. The path goes
up along hedges of brambles through asphodels and
hundreds of trailing periwinkles, with stepping-stones
and flowing streams; here and there a snow-white
olive-oil mill with sentinel cypresses. And, below,
the pale snow-fed Guadalete flows swiftly over white
stones through groves of oranges. From a distance
Grazalema gives the fanciful idea of broken shells on
a stony shore, with its houses of white and pink and
brown, many of them overhanging and seeming to
grow out of steep rocks. From the village a path
leads through corkwoods, the stripped trunks of the
trees a deep maroon colour, to Ronda on its sheer hill.
From Antequera to Malaga by road is some fifty
kilometres, and here, too, are wonderful contrasts and
sudden change from winter to summer. In the
unsheltered plains round Bobadilla the almond-trees
show no sign of flower, and the grey mountains above
the stern frowning towers of Antequera are ice-bound.
Turning the pass, appears a magnificent view of six
or seven serrated hill-ranges to the line of sea beyond
hidden Malaga — on the left a fantastically jagged
range, sprinkled in parts with snow ; on the right a
long line of snow-mountains that ends in a bare range
rising purple from the sea. And the ice soon grows
thin and vanishes, giving place to irises, tiny jonquils,
and periwinkles, and descending half-way down the

138 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

mountain side, to Villanueva, the almond-trees have
already lost half their blossoms, grass and white dusty-
road and dark new-ploughed soil are thickly strewn
with their petals, and the fields of broad beans are in
scented black and white flower. Along the coast full
summer reigns, the balconies are heavy with trailing
flowers, the sea is deepest blue, and the wind blows
half-sultrily across the fields of beans and the faded-
green leaves of sugar-cane, with their scent of hay.
Sometimes the road is lined with poplars, and ox-carts
go laden with grass and trefoil and leaves from the
sugar-canes. Elsewhere the road winds inland through
grey rocky hills and woods of strong-scented pines,
with glimpses of blue sea ; or passes high above cliffs,
the sea swelling dull green immediately below or
foaming round dark rocks. From Motril or some
other point one may go up to Granada, the Sierra
Nevada appearing and altering continually; and
thoughts of the Alhambra and other names of magic
shorten the road, though it has many a beautiful view
and village, such as Pino to the left on the mountain
side, with its white houses and deep red-brown roofs.
But of the many fair districts of Andalucia perhaps
the most delightful in scenery is that lying between
the Guadalquivir and La Mancha, a region of brush-
wood and mountain. The road from Marmolejo runs
up through hills covered with shrubs of every shade
of green, from grey-blue to shrill yellow, many of
them scented, lentiscus, escalonia, adelfa, cistus, rose-
mary, and a hundred more; even in February the
mid-day sun scents the whole air with them. Near

FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCIA 139

the village of Cardena, some thirty miles from Mar-
molejo, a ruin is supposed to be that of the inn where
many scenes of "Don Quixote" occurred, but only a few
stones remain. Leaving the village in early morning
in frost and ice in order to go down to Montoro on
the Guadalquivir, the road at first is wild, bordered
by oak-trees, with flocks of sheep, a few patches of
corn, many magpies, the plaining of birds and the
occasional whirr of a partridge. Yet even here in a
few hollows are vines and almond-trees, and spaces of
scented plants and wild yellow jonquils, with white
or brown or yellow butterflies, a humming of bees
and rustling of lizards. The road now cuts through
hills of scented shrubs, so various and ordered with
such careful harmony as could be rivalled by no
garden planted by man. On either side are range
and range of hills shrub-covered, dull green, brown
and blue, brown where the shrubs have been cut for
firing. To the right is a wide deep gorge with tiny
river far below, and glimpses of blue distances and
valleys of more hills. To the left more hills, and
across a blue distance of hill valleys the Sierra de
Jaen with its beautiful pyramid-shaped peak of
deepest snow, and far to the right of it the two more
pointed peaks of Granada's Sierra Nevada, marvel-
lously clear in distance. Between them and the
Sierra de Jaen runs the snow-sprinkled range above
the village of Los Villares de Jaen. In the tran-
sparent might of even a February noon the more
distant and the higher of the near hills are purple,
and the great snow-mountains below the snow-line

140 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

grow faint and grey. Montoro is a beautiful quaint
town rising above the Guadalquivir in seven or eight
storeys of houses of red stone and whitewash. The
tall church-tower, also of red stone, stands massively
above the town, and precipitously steep and cobbled
streets lead up to it. Houses look sheer down from
windows, balconies, and gardens to the river far below,
which flows over a weir above and below the town,
so that there is a perpetual sound of rushing water.
From Montoro one may follow the Guadalquivir, now
a majestic river, through its olive groves to the famous
bridge of Alcolea, and the low white line beneath
bare hills and wooded mountains which is Cordoba,
seen from the East. Everywhere on the roads and
in the inns of Andalucia the peasants are courteous,
pleasant, intelligent, picturesque ; always ready to
give any service in their power, often immensely
ignorant. They will ask if " Ingalaterra " is not
Spain's border-country and confuse it with Gibraltar,
or if the Queen was a Christian before her marriage.
For the most part they cannot read or write ; * yet
they converse willingly on the most various subjects,
especially on politics and religion, the mayor and the
priest. Here a woman complains : " Nine children I
had, and the nine are dead; it's better so in these
times of misery " ; there a peasant describes the snowy
Sierra in the month of August, how it glows whiter

1 The latest statistics available show that, while 90 and 80 per
cent, of the electors in some northern provinces of Spain can read
and write, in Andalucia the highest averages are 51 and 50 (pro-
vinces of Cadiz and Seville), that of the province of Cordoba being
but 41, of Almeria 38, of Granada and Jaen 35, of Malaga 34.

FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCIA 141

than lilies across the plain — mas blanca que una
azucena; or tells how beautiful is the country in
later spring when the quinces, apples, and pome-
granates are in flower, que es un paraiso — a very
paradise. As they sit round the candela, in the cold
evenings of early spring, talk flows on into the night,
always pleasant and courteous, as of one gran senor
to another.

XVI

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH
LITERATURE

THERE is not a literature in Europe more
individual than that of Spain. It has
been influenced greatly at various times
by other countries, especially Italy and
France, but in its many masterpieces it has a flavour
of the soil, a local colouring that is all its own. Even
when Spanish authors have borrowed most freely they
have usually succeeded in casting their own individu-
ality over their " honourable kind of thieving." Who
has a more individual genius than Juan Ruiz, the
merry Archpriest of Hita ? Yet it has been shown
that his debt to French, Latin, and other authors is
very considerable. In this form of borrowing — prac-
tised by Shakespeare — which is not a direct imitation
but a loan of bricks to make them marble, there is in
fact a high originality. The phrase in which the
merits of the Marques de Santillana have been summed
up might be applied to the whole of Spanish litera-
ture : when it ceases to imitate it is inimitable. San-
tillana's mountain songs — his serranillas are scented

SPANISH LITERATURE 143

as it were with the thyme of the Castilian hills,
whereas his sonnets in the Italian manner are colour-
less and artificial.

Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly speaks of "that forcible
realistic touch, that alert vision, that intense im-
pression of the thing seen and accurately observed
which give to Spanish literature its peculiar stamp
of authenticity." The clear atmosphere of Spain, in
which distant mountains seem to be close at hand,
is also the atmosphere of Spanish literature. The
Spaniard may have little subtlety of insight or
critical judgment, but he has a directness of vision
that has manifested itself in bigotry, brutality, and
cynical satire, as well as in keen humour, straight-
forwardness, and dignity of character. The realism
which has produced the terrible Christs of the Cathe-
drals, with their long human hair and life-like
wounds, or the polychrome statues of Spanish carvers,
with a presentation of pain on the human face in all
and more than all its horror — this realism may be due
either to a hatred of all that is false and factitious or
to a lack of sensibility, an inability to sympathize
without a harsh shock, a thrill of terrified awe.
What would the Greeks have said to these tortured
features, these agonizing brows and flowing wounds ?
It is as false art to perpetuate in wood or stone the
agony of a few culminating moments as it is to
picture a face laughing or yawning, from whose
perpetually open mouth we will soon turn with a
laugh or a yawn. This realism has found a less
harsh expression in Spanish literature, as in the sane

144 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and brilliant art of Velazquez. The brutality occasion-
ally makes itself felt, as in some of Quevedo's bitter
writings, but most often the spirit is nobler and more
human. In the twelfth-century " Poema del Cid " all
the figures stand out in wonderful clearness, from the
Cid himself to the nine years' old child at Burgos, who
tells the Cid that they dare not open their doors to
him for fear of the King's edict. And the events of
the poem are brought to pass before our eyes with a
joyful zest and rapidity and a stamp of truth that are
worthy of Homer. We see the Cid ride with a hundred
chosen knights across the Bridge of Alcantara and
up Toledo's narrow streets. We see him knocking at
the gate of San Pedro de Cardeha to bid farewell to
his wife Dona Jimena, and the abbot, who was
saying Mass for the return of dawn, running out
with lights and torches to welcome "him who was
born in happy hour." We see him again in battle as
the pennants rise and fall, we hear " the sword's
griding screech " and the trampling of the horses at
which the earth trembles. In " Celestina," the long
prose drama of the end of the fifteenth century, we
have the same truth to life, though in very different
scenes. Here it is not knights and battles, but
common people of the street — the old hag Celestina,
or Calisto's servants — that are drawn with a master
hand.

" Celestina " gives some inkling of the picaresque
novels to come, of which the flower and cream is
" Lazarillo de Tormes " (1554 is the date of our earliest
edition), to be followed by " Guzman de Alfarache,"

SPANISH LITERATURE 145

'•' El Buscdn," and a long posterity in Spain, France,
and England. This is no tale of true love like
the " Celestina," but of gnawing hunger and of the
ingenious efforts of Lazarillo to procure himself
bread. His successive masters, the blind beggar, the
miserly priest, the penniless Castilian gentleman, the
rascally seller of Papal bulls, are sketched in the auto-
biography of their servant Lazarillo, with the keen
eye of famine, and are unforgettable, as is Lazarillo
himself, whose name has become the common name
in Spain for a blind man's guide, just as Victor
Hugo's immortal Gavroche gave his name to the
Paris gamin. It is, in fact, a masterpiece of seven
short chapters, lively in every sentence, of a direct
and biting humour, perhaps the most graphic story
ever penned. A few terse phrases throw a scene or a
character into amazingly high relief, and the picture
is as fresh and living to-day as when it first appeared
three and a half centuries ago. No other country and
no other language could have produced a piece of
realism so cynically bare, so completely charming.
It has the caustic pithiness of Spanish proverbs, the
bitter flavour of harsh Iberia. It belongs to life
rather than to literature, but life portrayed with the
restraint and force of a consummate art. It was early
translated into English as " The Marvelus Dedes and
the Lyf of Lazaro de Tormes." The authorship of
" Lazarillo " has been ascribed to this man and to that,
and there has been great argument about it and about,
without the least degree of certainty. The name of
Hurtado de Mendoza is frequently to be found upon the

146 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

title-page. Born in 1503, he was alive when the
novel appeared ; he was an author ; he could write
in trenchant, nay, in scurrilous style, as his letters
concerning the Pope show — he calls him an old
rascal, vellaco ; but these are hardly conclusive
proofs. Whoever the author, the work still reigns
supreme, though many may have thought with Gine's
de Pasamonte in " Don Quixote " that it would be an
evil moment for "Lazarillo" when their memoirs
appeared. Half a century after " Lazarillo " the same
faithfulness to picaresque reality, with a broader
outlook and a more universal sympathy, is to be
found in the " Novelas Ejemplares " of Cervantes. Rin-
conete and Cortadillo, the eponymous heroes of one
of his best-known stories, are closely related to
Lazarillo ; they are in fact the Lazarillos of the
South of Spain. On the realism of " Don Quixote " it
is unnecessary to lay stress. Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly,
referring to its immediate triumph, says : " To con-
temporary readers the charm of ' Don Quixote ' lay
in its amalgamation of imaginative and realistic ele-
ments, in its accumulated episodes, in its infinite
sympathy and its persuasive humour. There was no
question, then, as to whether * Don Quixote ' was a well
of symbolic doctrine. The canvas was crowded with
types familiar to every one who had eyes to see his
companions on the dusty highways of Spain. The
wenches who served Don Quixote with stockfish and
black bread ; the lad Andres, flayed in the grove of
oaks by Juan Haldudo the Rich of Quintanar ; the
goatherds seated round the fire on which the pot of

SPANISH LITERATURE 147

salted goat was simmering ; the three lively needle-
makers from the Colt of Cordoba; the midnight
procession escorting the dead body from Baeza to
Segovia, and chanting dirges on the road ; the dozen
galley-slaves tramping on, strung together like beads
on an iron chain ; all these are observed and presented
with masterly precision of detail." *

In spite of Censors and Inquisitors Spanish
literature was free and outspoken, for it portrayed
life as it was. If it shows devotion to Church and
King it is because these were deeply-rooted national
convictions. But the priests sometimes meet with
less respect. The Cid threatens to make of the Pope's
vestments trappings for his horse, and we have seen
that Hurtado de Mendoza, the King of Spain's am-
bassador in Rome, speaks of his Holiness in terms that
call to mind Benvenuto Cellini's passionate outbursts.
We have seen, too, the unflattered portraits of priest
and pardon-seller in " Lazarillo de Tonnes." Cervantes,
who "respects and adores the Church as a Catholic
and faithful Christian," does not fail to thrust fun at
the fat alforjas, the well-provisioned saddle-bags of
the sefiores clerigos, " who rarely allow themselves to
fare ill," and he deals more sternly with the household
priests who "govern princes' houses, and, not being
of princely birth themselves, are unable to guide the
conduct of those who are," and who "in trying to
teach those they govern to be narrow and limited
make them miserable." He gives us the picture of
the false pilgrims who travel through the length and
1 " Chapters on Spanish Literature." 1908.

148 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

breadth of Spain, " and there is not a village in which
they do not receive meat and drink and at least a
real in money, and at the end of their journey they
leave the country with a treasure of over a hundred
ducats," and he even allows himself to wonder why
Gines de Pasamonte's clever monkey has not been
arraigned before the gentlemen of the Inquisition.

There are in Spanish literature occasional signs
of a distorted imagination, a restless longing to
materialize the invisible, which is not a fanciful
dreaming, but rather a kind of super-realism, a
strained and persistent effort to attain a tangible
perfection — the spirit which in some Spanish build-
ings has added ornament to ornament till the result
is a rich magnificence in an infinity of details but
hideousness as a whole. One form of this we have
in such works as Quevedo's " Suefios," another, the
Churrigueresque, in the later style of Gongora. On
the other hand, we have the great Spanish mystics
in their sincerity, reflected in the exquisite simplicity
of their style, one of the noblest glories of the litera-
ture of their country. Yet they, too, as has often
been pointed out, were pre-eminently practical ; Luis
de Leon, for instance, energetic head of the Augustinian
Order ; Santa Teresa, the wise, untiring administrator.
Their writings have the fiery transparency of Pascal,
and all the clear and vivid precision of military
writers of many countries, in whose case, as in that
of so large a number of Spaniards, " the lance has not
blunted the pen." 1 The mystics rise to noble heights
1 " N'uma mao a penna e n'outra a laii9a."

SPANISH LITERATURE 149

of sublimity, but the virtue of their writing is that it
is to the point, with no vague rhetoric ; and no advo-
cate could surpass the lucidity with which Luis de
Leon conducted his own defence before the Inquisition.
Perhaps the weakest side of Spanish literature is
its deficiency in critical insight. Few, indeed, are
the Spanish authors of whom it might be said, as
Ticknor said long ago of Luis de Leon, that there is
scarcely a line of their poetry that is not exquisite.
Espronceda's undeniable genius, for instance, shatters
itself on that unwieldy fragment " El Diablo Mundo."
Excessive facility of composition has been the
stumbling-block of the authors as it has been the
stumbling-block of the orators of Spain. Hardly a
speaker in the Spanish Cortes is ever at a loss for
words to give expression to his ideas or to conceal the
lack of them. Each, as Don Adriano de Armado in
" Love's Labour's Lost," is one

" That hath a mint of phrases in his brain,
One whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony."

Even so marvellous an orator as Emilio Castelar
was at times carried away by the magnificent
eloquence that flowed unfailingly from his lips. In
the same way Lope de Vega could throw off a play
in a few days. Over 2000 plays and autos are
ascribed to him, and in the 450 that remain his most
ardent admirers confess that there are arid tracts.
And, ordinarily, this copiousness has been a fault,
telling against Spanish literature, and it continues to
be a fault: SeSor Blasco Ibafiez writes his brilliant

150 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

novels in evident haste ; Seiior Perez Galdos has
entered on the fifth series of ten of his "Episodios
Nacionales," and his other novels and plays are very-
numerous. Such wealth of production could not but
be harmful to critical judgment. In the nineteenth
century Spain produced one or two excellent critics,
especially Larra and Clarin, the pseudonym of Leo-
poldo Alas, author of " La Regenta," one of the most
striking psychological novels of the century. Gener-
ally, however, if German literary criticism is circular
and, however illuminating the by-paths of its learn-
ing, wanders round the point without ever quite
touching it, Spanish literary criticism is superficial,
and either veils the point in a polite mesh of words,
or is prevented by this very rhetoric from seeing the
point at all. Even Valera, who so carefully limned
his own prose, and whose verse, though not inspired,
is always delicate and polished, was far from being
a good critic. He praised effusively works that at
best deserved silence, and this insincerity in literary
matters is, it is to be feared, a common weakness in
Spain.

The characteristic of Spanish literature that unites
it in a special bond of sympathy with English litera-
ture is its large store of humour. It meets us in the
" Poema del Cid," in the character of the Cid, and in the
quick detection of the ludicrous; the poems of the
Archpriest of Hita are full of merriment and of
humorous portrayal of character ; the humour of the
Archpriest reappears in "Lazarillo de Tonnes," but
without his jovial gaiety ; with Quevedo its vein

SPANISH LITERATURE 151

becomes cruelly satirical. Humour did not desert
Luis de Leon when ill and solitary in the dark Valla-
dolid prison of the Inquisition ; and it is to be found
in a large majority of Spanish authors, being but
another side of their direct, unclouded observation.
In the most humorous of all books, even Don
Quixote, the Knight of the Sad Countenance, is con-
strained to laugh : at the sight of Sancho, we read,
his melancholy was not strong enough to prevent him
from joining in his laughter — and the whole world
laughs with, not at him.

It is because Spanish literature is intensely
national that it has so universal an interest, and in
its most recent phase, the novel, it has a local character
that is full of charm. Jose Maria de Pereda, for
instance, scarcely ever left his native Cantabrian
province. He wrote of the places and people that he
understood and loved. Yet no one who has read his
great novels, "El Sabor de la Tierruca," or "Sotileza,"or
" Penas Arriba," will contend that they are provincial,
or that their interest is merely local.1 His characters

1 M. Boris de Tannenberg, speaking of " Sotileza," has said excel-
lently : " C'est que plus une csuvre a un caractere local marque, plus
elle a de chance de devenir universelle, a condition que l'e'crivain,
sous la particularite des moeurs et du langage, ait penetre jusqu'au
fond commun d'humanite." And Don Marcelino Menendez y
Pelayo, who represented King Alfonso on January 23, 1911, in the
ceremony of unveiling at Santander the statue of Pereda by Sefior
Collaut Valera (nephew of the novelist, Juan Valera), said in his
speech: "His books, so local that even the inhabitants of the
mountain require a glossary, and as Spanish as the most Spanish
writings since Cervantes and Quevedo, are profoundly human owing
to the intensity of life which they contain, and the quiet majesty
with which it is developed."

152 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

are universal, and Pereda is another instance of the
truth that he who digs a little land deep reaps a
better reward than he who works shallowly over a
wide extent. So Senor Blasco Ibanez is read with
most delight when he cultivates his own garden — the
city and province of Valencia.

XVII
THE POEM OF THE CID

1. — A Primitive Masterpiece

THE national hero of Spain has been pre-
sented in many guises, but is nowhere
more intensely Spanish than in the
" Poema del Cid." Here are no marvel-
lous events and miracles, no journeyings out of Spain
to Paris and Rome ; everything occurs naturally and
simply in Spanish surroundings, and this the first
great masterpiece of Spanish letters has a strong
flavour of the soil. After winning a " victory
marvellous and great " over the Moors in Spain, the
Cid says, " I give thanks to God who is Master of the
world ; I was in want before, now I am rich, for I
have goods and land and gold and honour. . . . Moors
and Christians live in great fear of me. There, inland
in Morocco, where the Mosques are, they look to have
some night an inroad from me. It is but their fear, for
I think not of it. I shall not go to seek them, in
Valencia shall I be." The Cid is chivalrous, brave,
magnanimous, simple, with a strong sense of humour

154 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and love of fair-play. With simple good faith the
poet sees no need to explain or excuse actions of his
hero that may seem blameworthy to a later age, such
as the deceit practised upon the two Jews. Though
not historical, the poem has an air of truth and
sincerity deeply impressive. It was probably com-
posed in the middle of the twelfth century, not much
more than fifty years after the Cid's death in 1099.
It has been attributed to the beginning of the thir-
teenth century, but intrinsic evidence warrants the
earlier date. The language is more archaic than that
of thirteenth-century writers. Traces of the Latin
chrysalis appear. " To-morrow morning " is eras a la
manana, half Latin and half Spanish, and " each " in
the same way is quiscadauno, while the word huebos,
which frequently occurs in the sense of menester, is but
the Latin opus thinly disguised. The poem, as it has
come down to us incomplete, has nearly four thousand
verses. It is written in long assonant lines of unequal
number of syllables. " The poet," as Tomas Antonio
Sanchez, who first edited the "Poema del Cid" in 1779,
remarks, " thought nothing of giving two or three
syllables more to a line as his sentence might require,"
and lines of eleven and lines of eighteen syllables
occur indifferently. From beginning to end the story
moves on without flagging ; the style is so rapid and
direct that it carries the reader with it. There is a
joy and freshness in the narrative that have rarely
been surpassed.1 These events may not have

1 We are apt to forget that men in the Middle Ages, if they
dwelt insistently on the sinister "Dance of Death," also felt to the

THE POEM OF THE CID 155

happened, or may have happened differently, but that
matters little, since, owing to the skill of the un-
known poet, they stand out with a vividness that
imprints them indelibly on the mind of the reader
and proves that nothing is so real as that which has
not happened. Who can Iforget, for instance, the
arrival of King Alfonso and the Cid at Toledo, when
the King passes on into the town, but the Cid
remains on the further side of the Tagus, in the castle
of San Servan (now a beautiful ruin with two
Moorish windows still left, and surrounded by dwarf-
asphodels in spring). He says to the King : " I with
mine will rest in San Servan ; this evening will my
followers arrive. I will hold vigil in that holy place ;
to-morrow morning I will enter the city." Here he
and his followers "said matins and prime until the
dawn," and next day they enter Toledo, the Cid
splendidly attired and accompanied by a hundred
knights, riding across the bridge of Alcantara and
up the steep and narrow street to the Court or
Parliament.1 Every detail of his dress is given,
purple and gold and silver. But fresh and quaintly
vivid details are frequent in the poem. When the
counts of Carrion have outraged and abandoned their

full the joys of living. The " Poema del Cid " sings no variations on
the theme "How good is man's life, the mere living," but the
feeling itself appears in every line.

1 The King had sent " letters to Leon and Sanctiague, to Portu-
guese and Galicians, to those of Carrion and the Men of Castillo,"
to announce a Cort dentro en Tolledo, in order to judge between the
Cid and the Counts of Carrion. " Since I was King," he says, "I
have held but two Cortes, one in Burgos, the other in Carrion, this
third in Tolledo have I come to hold to-day."

156 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

wives the poet pauses to exclaim, " What good fortune
were the Cid Campeador to appear." Felez Munoz,
on finding the Cid's daughters almost at the point of
death, brings them water in his hat : " new it was and
fresh, and he had brought it from Valencia." Mass
is said "at half cock-crow, before the dawn." The
Moor Abengalvon upbraids the treachery of his guests
in planning his murder as follows : " Tell me what
have I done to you, Counts of Carrion ? I serving
you without guile, and you took counsel for my death,
Hyo sirviendovos sin art, E vos conseiastes para mi
muert." Nothing could be more spontaneous and
direct. With equal directness honest Pero Bermuez
calls one of the Counts of Carrion " a tongue without
hands," "a mouth without truth," and we read of
Asur Gonzalez, who " would breakfast before he went
to prayer," that " purple he came for he had break-
fasted, and reckless was his speech." The account of
the battle is well known : " they clasp their shields
before their breasts, they lower their lances with
their banners, they bow their faces over the saddles,
they went to smite them with bold hearts. With
loud voice calls he who was born in happy hour,
' Strike them, knights, for the love of charity. I am
Ruy Diaz, the Cid Campeador of Bibar.' All strike
in the group where is Pero Bermuez. Three hundred
lances are there, all with their banners. A Moor
apiece they killed at a single blow, and as they turned
about they kill as many more. There would you see
many lances rise and fall, many a shield pierced and
riddled, many a breastplate broken through, many

THE POEM OF THE CID 157

white banners come out red with blood, many good
steeds go without a rider. The Moors call on
Mahomet, the Christians on St. James. In a short
space a thousand and three hundred of the Moors
are slain." No version can give an idea of the
vigour of the original. But it is not only battle
scenes that are treated forcibly and thrown into high
relief. We may take the arrival of the Cid at San
Pedro de Cardena as an example of the amazing vivid-
ness given to more quiet episodes : " The cocks are
crowing and the dawn is trying to break, when the
good Campeador arrived at San Pedro. The Abbot
Don Sancho, servant of the Creator, was saying
Matins for the return of dawn. And Dona Jimena,
with five noble ladies, was praying St. Peter and the
Creator : ' O Thou who guidest all, be with my Cid
the Campeador.' He was calling at the gate and
they heard the summons. Heavens ! how glad was
the Abbot Don Sancho ! With lights and with
candles they ran into the courtyard. With such joy
they receive him who was born in happy hour. ' I
thank God, my Cid,' said the Abbot Don Sancho,
' since I see you here, accept my hospitality.' "

II. Valencia del Cid.

The poem opens abruptly with the exile of the
Cid from Castille. He rides to his house at Burgos
but finds all closed against him. Only a nine-year-
old girl is found to tell him that ".last night came
the King's letter. We dare not open or receive you,

158 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

else would we lose our goods and houses, and more-
over the eyes of our heads."

To obtain money the Cid fills two chests with
sand, and on these " covered with red leather, and
studded with nails well-gilt," he obtains six hundred
marks from the Jews Rachel and Yidas. They are
not to open the chests for a year. On the wall in
the cloister of the Cathedral at Burgos still hangs an
ancient chest known as the Cofre del Cid. Thus
furnished, the Cid leaves Castille, and he prays
solemnly to God and the glorious Saint Mary, " for
here I leave Castille, since the King is wrath with
me, and I know not if in all my days I shall enter
it again." He takes leave of his wife and children
at the Convent of San Pedro de Cardena, and, after
early Mass said by the Abbot Don Sancho, departs,
wistfully turning his head to look back. Dona
Jimena, his wife, prays for his safety to the " glorious
Lord the Father, who madest Heaven and Earth, and
thirdly, the sea, who madest stars and moon and the
sun to give heat." Already men were flocking to the
Cid's banner, and his first exploit is the capture of
the town of Castejon. He lies in ambush before it :
" The dawn is breaking, and morning was at hand.
The sun went forth, Heavens ! how beautiful it rose.
In Castejon all were awaking. They open the gates,
and quickly went forth to see their work in the
fields and their possessions." When they were all
gone forth, the Cid took the town. The next town,
Alcocer, he also captures by a wile. "The news
grieves those of Teca, the men of Teruel it does not

THE POEM OF THE CID 159

please ; it pleases not the men of Calatayud." A
host of Moors besieges the Cid in Alcocer, and after
three weeks, the provisions failing, he goes forth and
gains a great victory. At the sound of the drums of
the Moorish host "the earth was like to crack." He
pursues the enemy to the walls of Calatayud. Fata
Galatayuth duro el segudar. He sends Alvar Fanez
to Castiella la gentil with a present of thirty horses
for King Alfonso and money for Dona Jimena, and
for a thousand masses at Santa Maria de Burgos.
Zaragoza agrees to pay tribute to the Cid. Don
Eemont Berenger, Count of Barcelona, goes out against
him, and persists in coming to an engagement, though
the Cid sends him a message : " I have nothing of his,
bid him let me go in peace." The result is a crushing
defeat of the " army of the Franks," and the Count
is taken prisoner. The account of his captivity is
entertaining. The Count refuses all food : " * I will
not eat a mouthful for all there is in Spain. I will
rather die (lit. lose my body and leave my soul) since
such ill-equipped men have beaten me in battle.'
You will hear what said my Cid Ruy Diaz : ' Eat,
Count, of this bread and drink this wine ; if you do
as I say you shall be free, if not in all your days
you shall not see Christian land.' " The Count eats
nothing for three days : " They dividing these great
spoils cannot make him eat a piece of bread." Then
the Cid renews his promise to give him liberty : " But
of what you have lost and I won in the field know
that I will not give you any part, but what you have
lost I will not give you, for I have need of it for me

160 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and for my vassals, and will not give it you." At
length the Count yields. " The Count is eating,
Heavens ! with what good will. Over against him
sat he who was born in happy hour : ' If you eat
not well, Count, and I am not satisfied, here we shall
remain, we shall not part.' . . . The Cid, who is watch-
ing him, is satisfied, so quickly did Count Remont
move his hands," and he escorts him on his way.
The Count takes his leave and "goes turning his
head and looking back ; with fear he went that the
Cid will repent, that which he would not do for all
that is in the world." Fresh victories follow. The
Cid carries the war " over against the salt sea " and
takes among other towns Murviedro (the old Sa-
guntum and modern Sagunto). Here he is besieged
by the Valencians, but sallies forth and defeats them.
Fata Valencia duro el segudar. For three years
he continues to wage war and take towns. "The
fame of my Cid, know well, is noised abroad."
" The inhabitants of Valencia know not what to do.
From no quarter came bread, father and son are
without counsel, friend cannot comfort friend. A bad
thing, Sirs, it is to have a lack of bread." After
a siesre of nine months the Cid takes Valencia. He
establishes a Christian bishopric in his new town, and
sends a present of a hundred horses to King Alfonso.
Alvar Fafiez on his return escorts Dona Jimena and
her daughters Elvira and Sol to Valencia. The Cid
bids them welcome to the city : " ' You, loved and
honoured wife, and both my daughters, my heart and
my soul, enter with me the city of Valencia, the

THE POEM OF THE CID 1G1

possession that I have won you.' Mother and
daughters kissed his hands, with such honour entered
they Valencia. My Cid went with them to the
Citadel : he led them up to the highest part. Velvet
eyes glance on all sides. They look at Valencia, how
the city lies, and on the other side they have the sea.
They look on the plain, luxuriant, and large. They
raise their hands to pray to God. So glad is my
Cid and his companions for this good and great spoil.
The winter is departing, and March is about to come
in. . . ." The Moorish King Jucef, with " fifty times
a thousand " Moors, comes up against the Cid, but is
defeated with great slaughter. " There escaped not
more than a hundred and four." A fresh present of
two hundred horses is sent to King Alfonso. The
Counts of Carrion now determine to ask for the Cid's
daughters in marriage, and the King proposes an
interview with the Cid "above the Tagus, which is
a principal river." The marriage is arranged, and
the Counts return with the Cid to Valencia, where
the wedding festivities last a full fortnight. The
guests depart laden with presents from the Cid.
" Rich return to Castille those who had come to the
wedding." And here there is a very definite division
in the poem. " The verses of this song have here an
ending. May the Creator be with you and all his
Saints " (lines, 2286, 7). The remainder of the poem
tells of the treachery and punishment of the Counts
of Carrion. It begins with the incident of the lion.
A lion that was kept in the court of the Cid's house
escaped one day as the Cid lay asleep. His trusty

L

162 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

followers drew round him to keep him from harm,
but of the Counts of Carrion one scrambled under
the Cid's bench, the other ran out by the door crying :
" I shall not see Carrion," and hid behind the beam of
a wine-press, so that his cloak and doublet were all
soiled. The Cid, having cowed the lion, "asked for
his sons-in-law, but found them not. They call aloud
for them, but none answers. When they found them
and they came, they came all pale. You have not
seen such jests as went about the Court. My Cid
the Campeador ordered that they should cease."
Further events showed the small spirit and treachery
of the Cid's sons-in-law, and his daughters are ulti-
mately betrothed to nobler men, the Infantes of
Navarre and Aragon. The poem, as we have it, ends
with a prayer that God may give Paradise to him
who wrote (i.e. copied) it, and with a request for
money or a glass of wine for its reciters : " Dat nos
del vino si non tenedes dineros."

XVIII

A PRISONER OF THE SPANISH
INQUISITION

I. — NOVEDADES

THE poetry of Luis de Leon is not volu-
minous; he has no great variety of theme;
he sings "the quiet life of him who
shuns the world's uproar ; " but there
is, as has been said, scarcely a line of it that is not
exquisite. And if, as a lyric poet, Luis de Leon stands
in the front of Spanish literature, as a writer of
eloquent and well-moulded Castilian prose he has had
few equals. His " Nombres de Cristo " is one of the
masterpieces of the Spanish language. The sentences
are perhaps occasionally too prolix, lengthening out
in a rich profusion of words and images. He had,
as Ticknor said, a Hebrew soul, and he delighted in
similes. It is indeed partly this that gives to his
style a colour and a sound which rank him among
the greatest prose-writers of any age. But as a writer
Luis de Leon is too well known to need comment.
And to himself his literary works were of a secondary
importance, and held a subordinate place in his

164 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

strenuous and energetic life. Born in 1527, of a
well-known family at Belmonte in La Mancha, he
was sent by his father at the age of fourteen to the
University of Salamanca with the advice to " follow
the common opinion in letters, que siguiese la ojnnidn
comun en las letras." The precept was not unneeded
in that age, for the Reformation had unhinged men's
beliefs and left them a prey to many fears. In-
tolerance on the side of reformers was answered by
fresh intolerance. In Spain one might least expect
any dissent from the accepted religion. Even in
Spain, however, the general ferment of the rest of
Europe had found an echo, the spirit of doubt and
inquiry had penetrated to the Spanish Universities,
and men's minds were opening to new lines of thought.
There was indeed ample scope for reform. Scholas-
ticism had become a dry and stilted system, well
qualified to call down ridicule on all learning. Its
professors delighted in hairsplitting and quibbles.
Luis de Leon speaks with a scathing sarcasm of the
type of professor who said that he was ..." content
with a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints . . .
and had no wish for any new learning (novedades) ; "
of those who "flatter themselves and fancy that,
because they have in their rooms a score of books
covered with dust, and have obtained the degree of
master of arts, they have well earned the name of
men of letters, and may for the rest give themselves
up quite securely to sleep and good living . . . and
they consider that the mere fact of having the books
and dipping into some part of them once a year

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 165

bestows on them a knowledge of St. Thomas and the
Saints." But the new spirit of inquiry and reform
led those who belonged to the old school to fence
themselves the more closely with narrow and bigoted
beliefs, to cling to conventionalities of dogma, and to
cry out on the most innocent innovations. Violent
attacks on Scholasticism had the effect of showing
more moderate attempts at reform in an odious light.
Suspicions were everywhere rife, and it required no
little care to avoid the accusation of being anxious
for "new things." The highest ecclesiastics were not
exempt from attack. Carranza, the Archbishop of
Toledo, had spent a certain number of years in
England. In 1556 he had visited Oxford and found
it Catholic, la encontro catolica, but in the following
year at Cambridge he burnt many heretical books
and English Bibles. On his return to Spain he was
thought to have been contaminated by contact with
so many heretics, though he boasted that he had
done more than any other in discovering them.

II. — Salamanca University

In the Universities especially accusations of every
kind hung fire over men marked out by their position
or abilities. The University of Salamanca had always
been eminently conservative. Popes and Kings were
anxious for its welfare. Philip II. saw in the Uni-
versity a stronghold of religion and loyalty. Pedro
Chacon tells how "in the year 1560, on the return of
our sovereign Don Philip to Spain after an absence

166 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

of several years spent in reducing and governing the
kingdom of England, he at once confirmed all the
privileges which the University had received from
his predecessors." He intervened personally in the
general affairs and particular disputes of the Uni-
versity, and seems to have considered no trouble too
great to preserve the ancient purity of its opinions.
Luis de Leon became deeply attached to the Uni-
versity, " the light," as he said, " not of Spain only,
but of all Europe," and to Salamanca as student and
professor he devoted his entire life. He entered the
Augustinian order a few months after arriving at
Salamanca, and by so doing renounced a very con-
siderable income which he would otherwise have
inherited as his father's eldest son. His success was
rapid. He obtained the chair of philosophy, and
afterwards that of theology, and this latter chair he
still held when he was arrested in the beginning of
1572 and detained for nearly five years in the prison
of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The most serious
charges against him were that he had translated the
Song of Solomon into the vulgar tongue, and that he
had depreciated the authority of the Vulgate. But
it was a question primarily between two schools of
thought in the University, between the rival Greek
and Hebrew scholars, between the members of the
order of St. Dominic and the members of the order
of St. Augustine, and the case only came under the
authority of the Inquisition through the denunciations
of Luis de Le6n's enemies, such as Leon de Castro.
Leon de Castro was a professor of the old school. He

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 167

was an excellent Latin and Greek scholar, and was
possessed of great energy and perseverance. By his
learning, and partly by sheer force of character, he
had won a position of high authority in the University,
and he guarded his authority with a jealous care.
Intolerant of opposition, he sought to crush all who
by their talents or popularity might throw him into
the shade. He wished to reign supreme. He was
easily roused to such a pitch of anger that he lost all
control of himself ; " when engaged in a dispute," says
Luis de Leon, " he does not know what he is doing
or saying." He was hasty in his judgment of men
and opinions, and supplied deficiencies in his own
knowledge by a fierce positiveness. It is said that
if he found an opinion in the work of a saint or
philosopher, he would at once say, "This is the
opinion of all the saints, of all the philosophers."
To him the Vulgate was the final and irrefragable
authority, and he opposed with the utmost vigour
those scholars who went back to the Hebrew original.
Such Hebrew scholars he called " Jews," a name that
smelt of fire in that age. (Against Luis de Leon the
accusation was actually brought of being a Jew, and
descended from Jews.) If it was shown that the
Hebrew text differed from the Vulgate", Castro
answered that the Hebrew text had been altered by
the "Jews" since the translation had been made.
His position was thus impregnable. He would listen
to no arguments, but shouted down his opponents.
In a narrow age he might persuade himself that in
thus asserting his opinions he was doing good service

168 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

to the Church. His influence was without doubt
great, and it needed no little courage to oppose him.
Luis de Leon, however, was not a man to lie flat and
love Setebos. He was frank and open by nature,
even to rashness and indiscretion, and in his eagerness
for reform was not afraid of making enemies. When
he took his degree he attacked certain abuses in a
Latin speech of Ciceronian violence, and on another
occasion he publicly upbraided the Dominicans with
the heresies of their order, and the thrust seems to
have gone home, for he himself says that they felt it
keenly, " sintieronse fieramente." Above all, he had
no sympathy with pedantry and intolerance. It was
imposssible that two men of characters so different
should not come into collision, and in fact the dis-
cussions between professors were often marked by
boisterous disputes and all the venom of ill-feeling
and discourtesy that sometimes strangely enough
creeps into the daily life of the learned. On one
occasion Luis de Leon threatened to have Castro's
book — a commentary on Isaiah — burnt by the In-
quisition. On this book Castro had spent much
trouble and much money, and the threat cut him to
the quick, so that he answered that he would have
Luis de Leon himself burnt. And such threats were
not empty words, or the thoughtless bickering of an
idle hour. That Luis de Leon had many malignant
enemies was amply shown at his trial.

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 169

III. — In a Valladolid Dungeon.

The order of imprisonment was issued on the 26th
of February, 1572. His goods were to be confiscated
with the exception of a bed and forty ducats to
provide for his food in prison. He was to be seized,
wherever found, " in church, monastery, or other
sacred place," and he was to bring with him nothing
but clothes and linen. A curious clause adds that
" beasts of burden to carry him and his bed, etc., are
to be provided at the customary price, and the price
is not to be raised." He was thus arrested and con-
ducted to Valladolid. The following description of
the prison is given in the trial of Carranza, Arch-
bishop of Toledo, who had been confined there some
ten years before. " The prison consisted of two rooms,
one for him and one for two servants. They were so
remote that the Archbishop heard nothing of a fire
which broke out on the 21st of September, 1561, and,
lasting for a day and a half, consumed more than four
hundred houses, some of them close to the secret
prison. The stench was so intolerable that they were
obliged at times to beg that the doors might be
opened, or they would be suffocated. The infection
of the place rendered both master and servants
seriously ill, and the doctors of the Holy Office
reported that it was indispensable to bathe the apart-
ment in pure air morning and evening. In consequence
the Inquisitors arranged that a grating should be
made in the door, a device which the Archbishop
scorned as adding insult to injury. The rooms were

170 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

not swept . . . the shutters of the windows were
kept closed, and on some days the Archbishop had to
light a candle at nine in the morning. The food was
brought on broken plates ; the sheets served as table-
cloth . . ." In a letter written to Philip II., after two
years of imprisonment, the Archbishop says, " I fear
and expect death daily, and to this end my treatment
seems to have been directed ever since I came here."
The loss of sun and light, and the actual dirtiness and
horror of the place must have been utterly repulsive
to a man of Luis de Leon's temperament. In one of
his writings, " La Perfecta Casada," he says, " Is not
cleanliness the fountain head of beauty — the first and
greater part of it ? " He loved the open air, and was
wont to regret the loss of liberty which even his
duties as professor at Salamanca entailed. But to
the actual and severe hardships to be undergone there
was added, for the devout Catholic, the more subtle
and indefinite torture of the mind. For he could not
be certain that by some involuntary sin he had not
incurred degradation in this life, and punishment
unceasing: in the next, and in the loneliness and gloom
of the prison these doubts would often recur. Luis de
Leon acknowledged the full authority of the Inquisi-
tion, and his unqualified submission was not forced or
hypocritical, but the fruit of a sincere conviction.
The extreme clearness of his intellect was his safe-
guard, and, though he bowed himself in all things to
the will of the Church, he was well assured of his
own innocence. Shortly after his arrest he drew up
a profession of faith, declaring that he lived and died

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 171

" now and in the future in the faith and belief of the

Holy Catholic Church, and confessing his sins con

entranable dolor." His defence was conducted

throughout in a masterly way. During these five

years of suffering he showed a fine sincerity and a

clearness of argument that remind one very strongly

of Pascal. Never was his style more trenchant and

lucid, his reasoning more subtle than in the numerous

" Unpublished Documents " that have come down to

us. On no occasion was the patience and humility

of the man more clearly shown. It is a strange

reflection that many of these documents, in accordance

with the secrecy of the Inquisition's proceedings,

were kept hidden from Luis de Leon himself, and

that he probably never knew, as we know, that he

came within a little of being examined upon the

rack. In spite of his ingenious and elaborate defence,

Luis de Leon's trial was a long one, and one must

shudder to think of the sufferings and despair of men

of weaker metal and less subtle intellect, such as his

intimate friend Grajal, who died in prison. The

Inquisition proceeded as usual in an extremely slow

and thorough fashion. " Becato y secreto" caution

and secrecy, were indeed its watchwords. Witnesses

concerning Luis de Leon's case were examined in many

parts of Spain, and even at Cuzco, in Peru. It were

easy to declaim against the cruelty and tyranny of

the Inquisition, but on closer view it would seem

unjust to lay the blame entirely at its door. The

times, as we have noted, called for the utmost vigilance

on the part of the upholders of the true and Catholic

172 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

faith. They might hold themselves bound to investi-
gate with unwearied diligence the most trifling
disputes concerning the doctrine of the Church.
Already unorthodox books had been filtering into
Spain. A translation of the Psalms had been received
at Cadiz, and one man alone, a kind of sixteenth-
century Borrow, had brought two bales of heretical
books to Seville. The life of the bookseller was
rendered anxious and difficult by such proceedings.
In a letter to the Inquisitors of Valladolid we read :
"The booksellers of this town (Salamanca) have
received and continue daily to receive bales of books
from France and other parts. These they dare not
open for sale without permission." The evil must be
stopped before it spread contagion through the
country. It may be argued plausibly that the firm-
ness of the Inquisition saved Spain from the religious
dissensions that raged so fiercely in France, Germany,
and England, nor may it be forgotten that the
centuries of the Inquisition's most rigorous power
were the centuries of Spain's greatest literary glory.

Perhaps the harm of the Inquisition was, rather,
not that it affected original thought and research, but
that it created in everyday life an intolerable spirit
of suspicion and distrust. It was to the animosity
of their private enemies that the imprisonment of
both Archbishop Carranza and Luis de Leon was due,
and it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of the
witnesses who, " without being cited " and " for the
discharge of their conscience," laid their accusa-
tions before the Inquisition. In the University of

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 173

Salamanca there was much prying and spying, fostered
by the rivalries and enmity of the professors. The
professors were elected by the votes of the students
after a public discussion between the candidates on
a given theme, and this system naturally led to
considerable ill-feeling and many abuses. During
discussions in the University there would be always
some one on the watch for any specious subject of
accusation. Thus, when Luis de Leon maintained
that "marriage was not in itself an evil but only a
less blessed state than celibacy," Leon de Castro had
written it down in order to denounce it to the Inqui-
sition, and in the same way another professor had
gone hastily out during a discussion in order to fetch
pen and ink. On one occasion, when Zufiiga was in
Luis de Leon's cell at Salamanca, the latter mentioned
a book which his friend, the celebrated Arias Montano,
had sent him. Zufiiga thereupon displayed suspicions
of Montano which Luis de Leon resented. A few
days afterwards, to quote Luis de Leon's own words,
" he seemed to me to be still suspicious and, knowing
that he was of a morose spirit and ever inclined to
see things in their worst light, I said to him laugh-
ingly : ' You are indeed a pessimist ; it seems you
still think ill of Montano.' He said, ' No ; of the man
I do not think ill, but I am not certain that it is not
my duty to denounce the book.' " Luis de Leon goes
on to say that more than two years afterwards he
also "had a fit of pessimism, and, considering the
number of heretics who had been discovered and were
being discovered daily in Spain," determined himself

174 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

to lay the matter before the Inquisition — a common
way oi' forestalling an accusation. Again, Medina
examined with most holy zeal {con santisimo celo)
Luis de Leon's lectures and other papers. The result
would be all the more fruitful in that he would not
omit the notes taken by students at the lectures, and,
as Luis de Leon was well aware, " ignorant students
often put a quite wrong interpretation on what the
lecturer said." Medina did, in fact, call a meeting of
students in his cell and inquired of them if they had
heard or knew of any suspicious or perverted doctrines
of Luis de Leon. Such methods must multiply means
of attack and further spin out a trial. Of one witness
Luis de Leon, in his defence, said, " This witness is
the Bachelor of Arts Rodriguez, nicknamed ' Doctor
Subtle ' in the University. I think it is he because
he says I left him without an answer, and he was the
only person of that University with whom this
happened. For as he was a man of unsound judg-
ment and sometimes asked impertinent questions
and from what he heard and did not understand
collected nonsensical answers, I grew angry and called
him a fool. And at other times, in order not to
become angry and out of humour on his account, I
would give him no answer but flee from him. And
he is so witless and importunate that I remember
trying to escape him both indoors and in the Schools
and in the streets, he following and asking absurd
questions, I hurrying on without answering, until at
last some of my companions or other students would
push him aside and hold him back by force." A

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 175

little picture of academic life which for vividness it
would be hard to surpass. Luis de Leon, indeed, was
not sparing in his criticism of his various accusers.
Their names, in accordance with the custom of the
Inquisition, were kept from him, but on reading the
anonymous accusations, he referred each one to its
true author with unfailing judgment and was thus
enabled to refute them with a sure hand. Of one of
the witnesses who belonged to his own order he said :
" He is known among us as a man who never speaks
the truth except by accident." Of another he speaks
satirically as "most spiritual," espiritualisimo, and
says that the words " kisses," " embraces," " bright
eyes," and other words in the Spanish rendering of
the Song of Songs scandalized him; words, that is,
which had not struck him when he read them in
Latin, shocked him now that they were written in the
romance. Luis de Leon was not unaware that the
worst interpretation would be put on his sayings, or
reported sayings, and he was led by this fear himself
to lay many trivial details before the Inquisition.
Thus he confessed that at a lecture " the students
furthest from me bade me speak louder, for I was
hoarse and they could not hear me well, and I said :
' I am hoarse and, you know, it is better to speak low
that the gentlemen of the Inquisition may not hear.' "
He was full of life and humour, and many a chance
word spoken in jest might be twisted by the malicious
to an uncatholic implication. He felt in prison that
he was fighting blindfold against many enemies and
asked more than once to be brought face to face with

176 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

his accusers. " And thus," he says, " they speak from
afar as men in safety and free, while I, blind and in
prison, cannot see who is attacking me." Many
absurd charges were brought against him. According
to one witness he " always said low mass, even on a
feast dajr, and no one could hear what he said as he
mumbled ' tu, tu, tu,' and made an end very speedily."
Another accusation seems to have been based on a
mere quibble between the words vino, " wine," and
vin6, " came." For at a dinner some one seems to
have asked for wine and Fray Luis to have said that
it was doubtful if it had come ; but, according to the
witness, all understood his answer to refer to the
coming of Christ ! Another witness said that he was
" a very clever theologian, but somewhat bold in his
lectures " — a charge less petty than the preceding, but
from its vagueness scarcely less ridiculous. In the
same spirit Castro " had heard say," " thought that he
had heard " ; Medina " thought that he saw in Fray
Luis an inclination to new things." Such charges
coming from enemies made his innocence, as he said,
" clearer than the light of noon." Minute points were
elaborately dealt with. For instance, the sale of
Castro's book on Isaiah had been spoilt, he said, by
the Jews (Luis de Leon and his friends) ; according to
Luis de Leon, the real reason of its failure was its
size and costliness. As to the accusation of being, in
fact, by descent a Jew, it would appear that Fray
Luis' great-grandmother, or rather the second wife of
his great-grandfather, was of Jewish origin.

The one serious charge was, indeed, that he did

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 177

not give due authority to the Vulgate. It is probable
that his attitude had been inopportune at a time when
the Vulgate was being attacked on all sides by the
heretics, and that the numerous students who attended
his lectures were apt to exaggerate his doctrine.

And so the trial dragged on. Luis de Le6n began
to lose patience. " If only," he exclaims, " the sun
were divided fairly between me and my accusers " —
a metaphor borrowed from duelling. He complains
frequently of unnecessary delay. He writes to the
Inquisitors, " You are delaying the conclusion of my
trial without just cause," " without cause and to the
one end of lengthening out my imprisonment, and
with the wish to put a term to my life, since you
find me without fault." He begs that there be no
more delay "considering the length of time I have
been here, and the small cause there was for bringing
me here, and the enmity and notorious calumnies
that began and occasioned this scandal." His im-
prisonment, he says, is "a long, harsh and cruel
torment." Partly constant communications between
Valladolid and Madrid caused delay. Thus a request
of Fray Luis, made on the 20th of August, did not
receive an answer from the Supreme Tribunal at
Madrid till the 20th of September. Partly, too, it
must be admitted that after the scandal and excite-
ment caused by his imprisonment at Salamanca,
where he had a host of friends and followers, it
would seem almost as if the Inquisitors were un-
willing to release him with the confession that the
whole matter had been smoke without a fire; and

M

178 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

the longer the trial continued the greater, naturally,
would become their embarrassment.

He was allowed some books and a few other
articles. Thus he asks for a crucifix, a brass candle-
stick, a knife, " to cut what I eat," the works of St.
Leon, a Hebrew Bible, a Sophocles in Greek, a Pindar
in Greek and Latin, etc. He complains that he is
not properly attended, and " it has happened that I
have fainted with hunger from having no one to give
me food, and I beg that I may be given a monk of
my order to serve me if you do not wish to allow
me to die alone between four walls." He was nut
allowed the use of the Sacraments, and in his frequent
illness this was a constant torture. "You persist,"
he says, "in keeping me in prison as if I were a
heretic, deprived of the use of the Sacraments, with
manifest danger to my life and to my soul, though
you bring no fresh charge against me." He therefore
begs them, pending the sentence, to "allow me at
least a free death among my monks." Seeing that
the conclusion of his case was delayed from day to
day he implores, in another petition, to be transported
to some monastery in Valladolid that he may die there
as a Christian. " This is the only thing that I solicit
or desire, since the passion of my enemies and my
own sins have taken from me all that one desires in
life."

IV. — EX FORTI DULCEDO.

On the 28th September, 157G, the sentence is at
length pronounced. The majority of the judges "are

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 179

of opinion that Fray Luis de Le6n be put to the
torture as to his meaning, and as to what has been
witnessed against him, and as to the propositions that
have been noted as heretical, in spite of the fact that
the theologians profess finally to be satisfied with them
and to give them the meaning that Fray Luis would
have them bear; and that the torture to be applied
to him be moderate, seeing that the accused is of
delicate health ; and that the results obtained be then
further examined." This was the verdict of four out
of the seven judges; one gave no decision; the remain-
ing two were of opinion that the accused should be
reprimanded in the Court of the Holy Office, and that
in the general hall of the greater Schools of Salamanca,
in the presence of the students and other persons of
the University, he should declare his propositions to
be suspicious and ambiguous ; that he should be
forbidden to lecture in the Schools or elsewhere, and
that his translation of the Song of Solomon should
be prohibited and withdrawn from circulation.

The superior and more impartial tribunal of
Madrid quashed the sentence, and Luis de Leon was
not questioned on the rack. It ordered (7th December,
157G) that Fray Luis de Leon should be acquitted
and admonished in the Court of the Holy Office to be
careful in future how he treated of matters so
dangerous as those implicated in the trial. The
sentence pronounced runs as follows : " We find, in
accordance with the decrees and on the merits of the
said suit, that it is our duty to absolve and we do
absolve the said Fray Luis de Leon from the burden

180 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

of this trial." He requested and obtained a declaration
that he had been acquitted without penance or stain
whatsoever, and was free to exercise all his duties in
the University.

Luis de Leon's health had never been robust, and
the hardships of his imprisonment broke it completely.
That he survived is probably due to his fortitude and
mystic faith. In a dedication to Cardinal Quiroga,
he says : " When I was on trial, owing to the intrigues
of certain of my enemies, and was branded as suspicious
in the faith, and was cut off not only from the con-
versation but from the intercourse and very sight of
men, and was buried in a prison for five years, in the
midst of all this I felt a peace and joy fulness of spirit
which I often miss now that I am restored to the
light of day and to my friends."

These years spent in prison were not passed in
idleness. Besides the business of his defence, he wrote
several of his poems during this time and his long
treatise "Los Nombres de Cristo." Many know his
short poem beginning, "Here falsehood and wrong
kept me imprisoned," and ending with the line so
often quoted in Spanish literature, "ni envidiado ni
envidioso." And we may refer to this time of his
imprisonment such passages as "No pinta el prado
aqui la primavera " —

" Here with the spring the meadows are not gay
Nor the clouds golden in the rising sun ;
No nightingale pours forth its plaintive lay :
But here the night is sleepless, and the day
Is full of tears and unconsoling sorrow,
And the sad present has a sadder morrow. ..."

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 181

Or the beautiful poem beginning " Virgen que el sol
mas pura " —

" Virgin purer than the sun,
Glory of mortals, of the heavens light,
Whose pity is not less than thy great might, ..."

Without the enforced leisure of these years we
cannot doubt that his "Nombres de Cristo" would
never have been written, and Spanish prose would
have lacked one of its most luminous and brilliant
jewels.

Spanish literature owes him a great gratitude for
having written in Spanish, contrary to the prejudices
of the learned, who held that a writing to be profound
must be obscure, and " marvelled that a theologian of
whom they expected some great treatise full of deep
questions had ended by writing a book in romance."
But Luis de Leon wished, he says, to open the " new
path " of good style, that consists " both in what is
said and in the way of saying it, and in the task of
choosing the best words of those in common use, and
considering the sound of them, and even at times of
counting the letters, and weighing and measuring and
mingling them, that the matter be presented not only
with clearness but with softness and harmony."

Nearly five years after his arrest Luis de Leon
returned to Salamanca. He returned entirely justified,
and the University welcomed him back with rejoicing.
Over the Augustinian Order especially his trial had
huno- like a cloud, and the condemnation of so distin-
o-uished a professor must have been felt as a disgrace
by the whole University. The legend is well known.

182 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

When Luis de Leon resumed his lectures the entire
University thronged to hear him. He was enjoined
by the Inquisition to preserve complete silence as to
its proceedings, but this was an occasion at least for
subtle and indirect allusions, and for the excitement
of general sympathy. Luis de Le6n rose in the
crowded room and began his lecture with the words :
" Gentlemen, we were saying yesterday," and so con-
tinued his course. The intervening five years were
obliterated. The story is so thoroughly in keeping with
the character of the man, whose simplicity and sincere
humility produced an effect unattainable by the most
studious artifice, that we would willingly maintain
its truth. We would thrust aside the prosaic facts
that Luis de Leon did not resume his lectures, the
chair having been occupied in his absence, and he
acquiescing in this on his return (la daba por Men
empleada), and that, when he was assigned another
course of lectures, a long dispute arose in the Uni-
versity as to the hour at which he should deliver
them. We may say at least that, if the story is not
literal in the facts, in spirit it is essentially true. The
quaint kind of pulpit from which the words were
spoken, and the lecture-room with its rough-hewn
benches, are still preserved in the University at Sala-
manca, and the sublime words, " Deciamos ayer,"
form part of the repertoire of the tourist's cicerone.

Luis de Leon, on the recovery of his freedom,
might exclaim, in the words of the Persiles of Cer-
vantes (Cervantes, who professed himself Luis de
Leon's "reverent votary and follower," d quien yo

THE SPANISH INQUISITION 183

reverencio, adoro y sigo) : " I give you thanks, im-
mense and merciful Heavens, that you have brought
me to die where your light may look upon my death,
and not in the shades of the dark prison-house which
I now leave." He survived for fifteen years, dying
on the 23rd of August, 1591, nine days after being
promoted from Vicar-General to Provincial of his
Order. His good humour and natural gaiety, his
unselfishness and common-sense, won for him many
and strong friendships — we feel, indeed, that he was
a man not without failings, but entirely lovable. He
had been commanded by the Inquisitor-General to
publish his own works, and was entrusted with the
publication of those of Santa Teresa. His second
Inquisition trial arose apparently from a lecture on
the vexed question of predestination and freewill. It
was declared that the University of Salamanca was
greatly scandalized at the boldness with which he
maintained that the contrary of his own opinion was
heresy. The matter, however, ended by his being
"benevolently and lovingly admonished" at Toledo.
Besides these and many other occupations, he gave
ungrudging help to the Carmelite nuns in asserting
their independence, which was threatened by a reform
sanctioned by Philip II. The Pope, indeed, was
favourable to the nuns, but the King opposed the
Papal Brief, and Luis de Leon is reported to have
said : " It is impossible to carry out a single order of
His Holiness in Spain." The story that Fray Luis died
of grief on account of the King's anger at this oppo-
sition is certainly untrue, although it is likely enough

184 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

that the King was annoyed. He is said to have ex-
claimed : " Quien le mete a Frai Luis en estas cosas ?
— What has Fray Luis to do in this galere ? " Luis
de Le6n's life was thus not without many turmoils.
But we may like best to think of him, as in the
description in his " Nombres de Cristo," " in the month
of June, after the Feast of St. John when the Sala-
manca term breaks up," retiring from a long year of
work to the country house possessed by his monastery
on the banks of the Tormes. There, in the great
garden of trees growing without order, with a stream
" running and pausing as if in laughter," and with
the winding river Tormes in sight — " a place far better
than the professor's chair " — he would meditate alone
or converse with friends " in the cool of the morning,
on a day most calm and bright ; " " for," he says else-
where in the same work, " it may be that in towns
there is more refinement of speech, but fineness of
sentiment is of the country and of solitude."

XIX
THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL

I. — Revival. Fernan Caballero

THE success of " Don Quixote " might have
been expected to fire a host of imitators,
but the seventeenth century in Spain was
given rather to the drama than to the
novel, and the eighteenth century "was an age of
barrenness in Spain, so far as concerns romance." 1 In
the first half of the nineteenth century the Spanish novel
was for the most part a pale imitation of Sir Walter
Scott, and these somewhat insipid romances, in spite
of the wealth of subjects afforded by Spanish history,
were not genuinely Spanish ; they were due to a taste
imported by returning exiles, and were not a natural
"rowth of the soil. Thus the Condesa Pardo Bazan
could say that in Spain the novel has no yesterday,
only an anteayer, a day before yesterday, and the
appearance of Fernan Caballero's " La Gaviota " was
hailed by a Spanish critic as a link between Cer-
vantes and the nineteenth century. It marked,

1 James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. " Chapters on Spanish Literature,"
p. 231.

1SG THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

indeed, the revival of realistic fiction in Spain. Cecilia
Bohl von Faber, daughter of a distinguished German
settled in Spain, was born in Switzerland in 1796, but
passed nearly the whole of her life in Spain, and chiefly
at Seville. She combined German depth with the wit
and clear vision of Andalucia. A discerning Madrid
critic reviewing " La Gaviota," the first published
work of the then unknown Fernan Caballero — it had
been written first in French, and now appeared in
Spanish in the pages of " El Heraldo " (1848-49) — said
that it displayed a mixture of the German and Anda-
lusian Schools, the pencil of Dtirer, and the colouring
of Murillo. A character in "La Gaviota " observes :
" Were I Queen of Spain, I would command a novel
of customs to be written in every province." It
was the novelet de costumbres that Fernan Caballero
wrote with such brilliant success. She wished, she
said, to show Spain as it really was, and not as it was
commonly painted by foreigners.

Cecilia Bohl von Faber was thrice married — to
Spaniards — and it was as Marquesa de Arco Hermoso,
living on her husband's estate at Dos Hermanas, a
small village near Seville, that the idea first occurred
to her to collect the fast-disappearing customs and
traditions of the peasants. She came into frequent
touch with them owing to her wish to learn their
individual needs, and know how best to administer
her charity. The thirteen years from her second
marriage in 1822, to the death of the Marques de
Arco Hermoso, in 1835, were spent mainly at Seville,
at their house in the Plaza de San Vicente, or in the

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 187

neighbourhood. The story La Familia de Albareda,
the scene of which is Dos Hermanas, was then written,
from events that actually occurred in this village,
although it was not published till later. It was when
her third husband was absent in Australia that she
thought of publishing her stories, and took her nom
de plume from a small village of La Mancha, called
Fernan Caballero. The appearance of " La Gaviota,"
which is, indeed, one of the best, if not the best, of
Fernan's novels, aroused considerable surprise and
enthusiasm, and many surmises as to who might be
the author. It was a work so unlike the romantic
tales and insipid imitations then in vogue ; it showed
so fresh and spontaneous an inspiration. Here were
no echoes of older novelists; all was written from
keen personal observation, and the reader was enabled
by the author's art to realize in words scenes and
characters which he had known and felt, but had
been unable to express.

After the tragic death of her third husband, in
1859, Fernan Caballero was firmly resolved to enter
a convent, but her friends did their utmost to dissuade
her, and she believed, moreover, that the only books
she would be allowed to read would be those of
devotion. Finally she gave up this idea, and lived
for nearly ten years in one of the houses of the
Patio de las Banderas in the Seville Alcazar, granted
to her by Queen Isabel II. It would be difficult to
imagine a more pleasant home for a writer. On one
side the beautiful gardens of the Alcazar, with their
myrtles, palms, and oranges, clipped box-hedges, and

188 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

white marble fountains ; on the other the Plaza del
Triunfo, planted with orange-trees, acacias and palms,
and the Cathedral and wonderful Giralda tower. The
Revolution of 1868 came to destroy this peace. The
Alcazar became for the time the property of the
nation, and Fernan Caballero was driven to seek a
home elsewhere. She was for other reasons, as a devout
Roman Catholic and Royalist, deeply distressed by the
Revolution and its sacrilegious results in Seville. The
pettiness of many revolutionary measures was shown
by the fact that the night-watchmen — the serenos
— of Seville were forbidden, in calling out the hours,
to use the traditional preface " Ave Maria Purisima."
Fernan Caballero obtained the reversal of this decree.
She lived to listen with tears of joy to the bells of
the Giralda, as they rang out the news of the Restora-
tion and the beginning of Alfonso XII .'s reign. She
Avas then living in the curving, silent bye-steeet that
now bears her name. No. 14 is distinguished from
the other houses by having, besides the patio, a garden
with a large lemon-tree, and other shrubs. Here she
died in the spring of 1877, in her eighty-first year.
The Queen came to visit her here, and a memorial
tablet was placed above the entrance of the house by
her friends the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier.

The quality that gives imperishable value to
Fernan 's work is its truth : the scenes are at once
felt to be real, the characters are living. She repro-
duces the lively mirth and malicious wit of the
andaluz peasant, the gay laughter-loving nature of
the Sevillians, with their keen perception of the false

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 189

and the ridiculous. She describes a Seville patio (in
" Elia "), or a bull-fight (in " La Gaviota "), or a country
house, quinta (in " Clemencia"), or a deserted convent
(in " La Gaviota ") with a delicate minuteness of detail
that brings them vividly before us. Writing of
simple, everyday events, as in the preface she
characterizes those of " Elia," she paints them with
unsurpassed clearness and vigour, and much of the
piquancy and charm, the sal y pimienta, of the South
is in her pages. There are in her works some scenes
that in sobriety and psychological skill are worthy
of Stendhal. Her characters are drawn from life
with the sure and penetrating analysis of genius.
Perhaps the best example of all is the character of
Marisalada in," La Gaviota," but the slighter figures,
the conservative General Santa Maria and the bull-
fighter Pepe Vera, in the same novel, the vivacious,
charitable Asistenta in "Elia" (having much in common
with Fernan's own character), who is unmoved by
the discovery of a Roman epitaph on one of her farms
and refuses to believe that there is a land where
bishops marry, Marcial and Jenaro in " Lagrimas " —
all these and many more are sketched with masterly
skill. It is when they treat of country scenes and
peasant life that the novels of Fernan Caballero are
at their best, as the first half of " La Gaviota " in the
village of Villamar, or a part of " Clemencia " (1852)
in the village of Villa-Maria. The character of Don
Martin of Villa-Maria and the scene of his interview
with the importunate Tia Latrana are thoroughly in
the manner of Pereda. So, too, is the wife of the

190 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

village mayor in " Lagrimas." " Haber gastadu mis
cuartus" she exclaims — and the use of dialect, so
freely employed by Pereda, is noticeable — " en facere
de esse fillu meu un hulgazan ! Non me lo dejii para
esu mi tiu Bartulumd, es verdad." The foreigners at
Seville are portrayed with less sympathy ; so we
have Sir John Burnwood, who has come to Seville in
order to ride up the Giralda, and, finding this impos-
sible, proposes to buy the Alcazar, or Sir George
Percy, who is admitted to have noble qualities, but
allowed to show unmistakably bad taste.

Fernan Caballero is not afraid of interrupting her
story by digressions, whether their object be to incul-
cate virtue, to exalt the Roman Catholic religion, or
to ridicule the importers of foreign fashions and
foreign phrases into Spain. Sometimes, as in " La-
grimas," this is carried to excess and rather spoils the
effect of the story, but in most of her works the
digressions are never altogether wearisome ; the
original and fascinating character that won for Cecilia
Bohl von Faber a host of friends is not often or for
long absent from the novels and relaciones of Fernan
Caballero. It has been observed that " La Gaviota,"
though it contains scarcely any action, has not a line
too much. " No aspiramos a causar efecto," says the
preface of "La Familia de Albareda," and it is this
very absence of thrilling action or melodramatic effect
that gives so permanent a charm to Fernan's works.
For a proper appreciation of Seville and Andalucia
they are invaluable : there is not one of them in which
some trait explanatory of the Sevillian and andaluz

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 191

characters does not appear. A recent Spanish writer
quite unjustly denies that Fernan Caballero shows
any of the sal andaluza, and is of opinion that her
work has not left a deep trace in Spanish literature,
but must be considered rather as a preparation for
the higher flights of the novelists who followed. It is
difficult to agree with this view. Fernan Caballero
not only hoisted the flag of true Spanish realism, and
pointed to a land of promise, but carved for herself a
very real and abiding empire in this land of her
rediscovery.

II.— 1870-1900.

In 1864 Pereda published his first work, " Escenas
montanesas," and ten years later, and three before the
death of Fernan Caballero, appeared Valera's first
novel, " Pepita Jimenez," and Alarcon's " El Sombrero
de tres picos." Since 1874 scarcely a year has passed
without producing a Spanish novel that deserves a
high rank in literature. Yet Pereda1 did not at
once impose himself, and early in 1874 Perez Galdos
could put the following words into the mouth of one
of the characters in Napoleon en Chamartin : " In the
matter of novels we are so far astray that, after pro-
ducing the source of all the novels of the world, and
the most entertaining book ever written by man,

1 See pp. 151,222-238. Pereda is, perhaps, the least read outside
Spain of all Spanish novelists ; yet it is scarcely too much to say
that he who cannot appreciate Pereda cannot understand the spirit
or feel the true savour of Spain.

192 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Spain is now unable to compose a novel of more worth
than a grain of mustard seed, and translates these
sentimental French stories."

Similarly, Sefior Menendez y Pelayo remarks that
" about the year 1870, the date of Pe"rez Galdos' first
book, the Spanish novel was slumbering in the arms
of insipid or monstrous productions, entre Tionerias
y monstruosidades." There is little insipidity or
sentimentalism in the more modern Spanish novel.
Realism is the dominant note of Spanish literature.
The very atmosphere of Spain makes for clear vision.
Its artists are realistic, even brutally realistic, as
Goya occasionally is ; even its mystics have not been
wrapped wholly from the world : they do not live in
a cloud, insensible to the real facts of life. And in
the same way the great Spanish novelists are realistic.
There is, however, a true Castilian dignity about
their realism. They do not, in George Meredith's
phrase, mistake the " muddy shallows " for the depths
of Nature. They may treat of the vulgar and the
base, but they do not treat of them in a way that is
vulgar and base. They may be as outspoken as
Martial, but their realism is eminently sane and
clean.

The modern fashion, strongly in favour of realism,
should do justice to the merits of Spanish novels. It
is no doubt guided by the love of contrast that caused
Stendhal, a romantic and an enthusiast at heart, to
read pages of the "Code Civil" before writing his novels,
and to adopt a style mathematically cold and thin,
and Flaubert, a poet, to analyse a subject so vulgar

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 193

as that of Madame Bovary. A simpler age may
delight in works of a fantastic imagination, but a
more complex and perhaps hypocritical age must
have truth and away with vagueness and pretence.

Minds so complicated and many-sided as to be
rarely themselves, admire the simple and concrete,
and the Spanish genius, which is essentially objective,
answers to this taste both in its literature and in its
art. Yet it is characteristic that in many Spanish
novels realism and mysticism go hand in hand. That
peculiarly Spanish mysticism which shows its false
side in Clarin's "La Regenta," its practical spirit in
Palacio Valdes' "Marta y Maria," its sadness in Azorin's
" La Voluntad," is by no writer more sympathetically
treated than by Juan Valera, in " Pepita Jimenez " and
other novels. Valera was too great an artist to
belong to any school. He repeated in many prefaces
that his aim was not to instruct or to edify, but
rather to give pleasure. The old heresy that works
of art should edify has had great influence in Spain,
and it makes its presence felt in modern novels with
a set purpose, romans a these. It cast its shadow
over the work of Fernan Caballero and Pereda, and,
passing to the enemy, reappears at intervals in Perez
Galdos and Blasco Ibanez. But Valera would have
none of it. A novel, he said, " should be poetry, not
history, that is, it should paint things not as they
are but fairer than they are, illuminating them with
a light that may cast over them a certain charm."
The magic of his style, which he caught by his own con-
fession from the great Spanish mystics of the sixteenth

N

194 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and seventeenth centuries, supplied this charm, and
is sufficient to make his work imperishable. It is a
charm that is exquisite and escapes analysis, remind-
ing of that metallic lustre in ancient Spanish azulejos,
or glazed tiles, of which modern manufacturers in
vain seek to recapture the secret. Valera was not, in
a strict sense, a great novelist. The construction of
his stories is often weak, and the characters all speak
the language of Don Juan Valera. " In Valera," it
has been said, " there are no Sanchos, all are Valeras."
He was himself aware of these limitations. He would
sometimes say in a preface that he was not certain if
his book were or were not a novel, and as to the in-
variably polished speech of his characters, the con-
versation of the nurse Antofiona with Luis de Vargas,
in " Pepita Jimenez," is accounted for by the fact that
she had prayed that it might be given her to speak
on this occasion, not in grotesque language, as was
her wont, but in elegant and cultured style. Simi-
larly, Juana la Larga says to her discreet daughter
Juanita, " All that you have said seems to be taken
from the books that Don Pascual gives you to read."

But Valera could delineate characters skilfully.
In his longest novel, "Las Ilusiones del Doctor
Faustino," the hero, Senor Don Faustino Lopez y
Mendoza, is in some degree a typical figure of modern
Spain. Living in his half ruinous ancestral house in
the village of Villabermeja, he feels himself to be
capable of great deeds, but achieves nothing. He
laments not being of humble birth to become a
brigand like the great Jose Maria, he laments not

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 195

having been born in the eleventh or twelfth century
to carve out for himself a kingdom with his sword,
and he ends by obtaining a modest post at Madrid,
which brings him little over £100 a year. Valera's
creations have only seemed unreal because, through
the alchemy of his style, he is a King Midas, turning
all to gold, and the excellence of his art raises his
figures to the level of statues in Parian marble.
They are not, therefore, less lifelike ; because he has
an "exquisite adjustment of word to thought,"1 it
does not follow that he is " without life and passion " 2
— rather the passion is raised to a white heat, with the
flames no longer visible. And in his descriptions he
is a true realist, giving us the light and laughter of
Andalucia. His "Juanita la Larga" is a charmino-
sketch of life in an Andalusian village that may
recall Alarcon's " El Sombrero de tres picos." Some
of the most laughter-rousing scenes of " El Sombrero
de tres picos " pass in the little stone-paved court in
front of a flour mill, a quarter of a league from a
certain cathedral town in Andalucia. The court is
shaded by a huge vine-trellis, sufficiently thick and
solid for the miller to sleep — or pretend to sleep —
unnoticed among its leaves. It is a brief, delightful
sketch, coloured and malicious, of Andalusian life in
the first years of the nineteenth century. To Anda-
lucia also belong two novels by Palacio Valdes, " La
Hermana San Sulpicio" and "Los Majos de Cadiz."

1 " Chapters on Spanish Literature," p. 246.

2 Andres Gonzalez-Bianco, " Historia de la novela en EspaCa
desde el romanticismo hasta nuestros dias." Madrid. 1909.

196 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

But it is Andalucia described not by a native but by a
stranger, for Palacio Valdes is of the North. He has
a sense of humour rather English than Spanish, and
he is, indeed, almost as well known out of Spain as
within the Peninsula. It is a humour less bitter and
aggressive than that of another Asturian, Leopoldo
Alas, with whom Valdes collaborated in a volume of
critical essays. As a sketcher of character, Valdes is
admirable. Gloria, the typically Andalusian girl, and
the Gallegan Sanjurjo are both excellently drawn in
"La Hermana San Sulpicio." The scene of his
" Marta y Maria " is laid in an old town of Asturias —
the author is now in his native country — surrounded
by a wide level of meadows and gently sloping hills
to the ria, bordered by immense pine woods and the
sea. It is a novel even more delightful than " La
Hermana San Sulpicio." The scene of "La Aldea
perdida " is also Asturias. It is a pastoral symphony,
an Asturian counterpart to Pereda's " El Sabor de la
Tierruca," a charming story — in spite of its theatrical
ending — of village rivalries and reconciliations in a
land wooded with chestnuts and oaks and cider-
apples, a land of maize and cool green fields of trefoil,
and mountain paths hedged with honeysuckle. But in
other works Palacio Veldes has not maintained this
Spanish inspiration. In " La Espuma," " Maximina,"
"La Fe," the influence is that of the French naturalistic
School. Clarin (Leopoldo Alas), though born at Zamora
also an Asturian, was likewise deeply influenced by
France in his long work "La Regenta." In one of
his critical essays Clarin wrote that " Spanish realism

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 197

is very Spanish ; it is in the race. But it has its
defects, no todo en el es flores ; it is deficient in
psychology and the poetry of passion." In "La
Eegenta " we have passion and psychological analysis
and epigrammatic wit. The scene is the old cathedral
city of Vetusta (or rather Oviedo). The treatment is
not characteristically Spanish. Vetusta is here a
typical provincial town, such as Flaubert might have
described and hated, and its inhabitants are almost
all represented as ignorant, vulgar, or vicious. Their
stupidity and vulgarity are lashed with an ingenious
subtlety that is unsparing, and the motives guiding
their actions are laid bare with an amazing skill.
Clarin's humour is often a little cruel, and the novel
is crowded with terse and biting phrases. One of
the readers of the Vetusta casino — the worthiest of
them, Clarin is careful to assure us — is thus pilloried
in a few lines : " He arrived at nine o'clock every
evening without fail, took Le Figaro and The
Times, which he placed over Le Figaro, put on his
gold spectacles, and, lulled by the sound of the gas,
fell gently asleep over the foremost paper of the
world, a privilege which no one sought to dispute.
Shortly after his death of apoplexy, over The Times,
it was discovered that he knew no English."

The most prominent figure among living Spanish
novelists is undoubtedly Don Benito Perez Galdos.
In his "Episodios Nacionales," the troubled history
of Spain in the nineteenth century, from the wars
against Napoleon to the death of Prim, passes before
us in a Spanish human comedy. We see the noble

198 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

death of Churruca in the battle of Trafalgar, we
witness the brief, feverish defence of Madrid before
Napoleon, the heroic sieges of Zaragoza and Gerona,
the stubborn resistance of Bilbao to the troops of
Zumalacarregui in the first Carlist war ; later we see
Isabel II. silently crossing the French frontier at
Irun, the effect of Castelar's eloquence in the Cortes,
Prim landing at Cadiz — these and a hundred more
principal actors and events are marshalled in a suc-
cession of novels now numbering over forty. Perez
Galdos continues to write with undiminished vigour.
The forty-second episode, "Espaha Tragica" (1909),
pictures Madrid opinion in street and cafe during the
year 1870, when Spain was "in high fever," choosing
a king. The book ends with a vivid account of the
assassination of Prim. His long and difficult task
was crowned with success, but his presence was
needed now more than ever to check the hostility of
the federalists on the one hand, of the aristocracy on
the other. It was the 27th December, 1870, and on
the following day he was to travel to Cartagena in
order to receive the Duke of Aosta. He had just left
the Congreso. The night was bitterly cold and the
carriage rolled silently through the snow in almost
deserted streets. It was noticed that first one man
and then a second stopped in the street to light a
cigar. This was apparently a signal. A little further
on, in the Calle del Turco, a carriage blocked the
way, and almost immediately the windows of Prim's
carriage crashed in on both sides and he fell back,
wounded by more than one bullet. The forty-third

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 199

Episode, "Amadeo I." (1910), describes the reign of
the Italian prince which began thus tragically with
the murder of Prim, continued for two years in a
tragi-comedy, and ended with the dignified with-
drawal of the loyal and disinterested " rey caballero,"
who had been wilfully and persistently misunderstood
and slighted by the subjects who had invited him to
reign over them. With the Queen and their three
children, including the infant Duke of the Abruzzi,
he descended the steps of the Palacio del Oriente for
the last time "entre alabarderos rigidos, sin musica
ni voces que turbaran el fiinebre silencio. Solo el
rumor de las pisadas marcaba el lento caminar de una
epoca" (February, 1873). With this and a volume
on the first Spanish Republic,1 the fifth and final
series of the Episodes marches rapidly towards com-
pletion. For forty years novels and plays from Perez
Galdos' pen have appeared at the rate of two or more
a year, and some of the novels are of considerable
length — "Fortunata y Jacinta" has something like
two thousand pages. Well-drawn characters and
skilfully reconstructed scenes abound, but a weari-
ness sometimes overcomes the reader. For these
novels scarcely seem to have an end or a beginning ;
there is no plot or concentration of interest. Perhaps
for this very reason they arc an extremely faithful
presentation of life. No one would dispute Perez
Galdos' great talent as a writer, but his admirers
may regret that he does not pause to draw more com-
plete pictures with finished art. In his anti-clerical
1 La Primera Eepublica. Madrid. 1911.

200 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

novel, "Dona Perfecta," Don Inocencio represents
the influence of the priest in the family. Dona
Perfecta, in league with the priest, secretly sets the
whole force of her wealth and power in mediaeval
Orbajosa in the scale against her nephew, Pepe, who
wishes to marry her only child, Rosario. Pepe is
looked upon in Orbajosa as an atheist and hors la
loi, although he is merely a modern man of science.
There is no acknowledged opposition : Dona Perfecta
meets him invariably with a pleasant smile ; but his
letters are opened and confiscated, he finds a spirit of
steady though veiled hostility in Dona Perfecta's
house and in Orbajosa, he is assured that Rosario
does not love him, and he cannot convince or over-
come insidious enemies who never come into the
open. Finally, Dona Perfecta becomes the murderess
of her nephew, though in such a way that her con-
science is entirely free from sense of guilt. The end
justifies the means. The character of Dona Perfecta
is developed with consummate skill; Palacio Valdds
thirteen years later drew a slighter sketch on the
same lines — Dona Tula, Gloria's mother (in " La
Hermana San Sulpicio," 1889). No doubt there are
towns in Spain such as Orbajosa, where the spirit of
the Church is bigoted and Jesuitical, opposed to all
progress ; or such as Nieva, in " Marta y Maria,"
where the people consider Maria to be a saint who
can work miracles, and bring children for her to cure
them with a look, and her confessor encourages the
belief; or such as Vetusta, in "La Regenta," where
Don Fermin combines a high position in the Chapter

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 201

of the Cathedral with a steady traffic in Church
furniture and ornaments. Yet one may sometimes
wonder whether the anti-Clericals are not too inclined
to attribute all the ills of Spain to the influence of
the priests. " Valgame Dios y que vida nos hemos de
dar, Sancho amigo," they seem to say, as if the dis-
solution of the religious orders and the separation of
Church and State would at once spell prosperity in
Spain. The religious communities are numerous and
rich ; beggars, as at Orbajosa, are also numerous (and
occasionally rich), but it would be unfair to lay the
blame of poverty and backwardness entirely on the
Church. There are many other causes, one of them
the dissipated, careless life of society in the large
towns, sketched by el padre Luis Coloma in his novel
" Pequeiieces," and by Perez Galdos himself in "El
Caballero Encantado."

III. — In the Twentieth Century.

The novel continues to hold the field in Spanish
literature. The early years of the twentieth century
saw the death of two splendid writers, Valera (1824-
1905), and Pereda (1833--1906), and Leopoldo Alas
died in 1901. Of the older novelists, Perez Galdos,
the Condesa Pardo Bazan,1 Palacio Valdes, and
Jacinto Octavio Picdn 2 still remain, and a brilliant

» See page 214.

1 Senot Pic6n, whose writings are rather exquisite than volu-
minous, is the author of " Dulce y Sabrosa," and several short
stories. A Spanish critic, Senor G6mez de Baquero, has said of
him that while " his thoughts look to the future, his style listens

202 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

group of younger writers is ready to pass on the torch
undimmed. Perez Galdos' " El Caballero Encantado "
is dated July-December, 1909. Writing immediately
after the Barcelona riots, it was natural that the
condition and future of Spain should be in his
thoughts, and an allegorical figure representing Spain
or the spirit of the race plays a prominent part in the
book. The novel has, indeed, a little too much of
the marvellous and the symbolical, and when the
hero by a last transformation becomes a fish in the
river Tagus, we are uncomfortably reminded of the
spurious and fantastical continuation of Lazarillo de

to the golden music of the past." His latest work is "Juanita
Tenorio," a long novel (published as vol. 3 of his Complete Works in
the autumn of 1910), in which his art, skilful and delicate as it is,
has not been entirely successful in eclipsing the sordidness of the
subject by the magic of the style. The following quotation — a
description of Madrid seen from an attic-window at night — will give
some idea of his restrained and clear-cut style : " Era noche cerrada.
En primer termino no percibia la vista mas que las grandes masas
angulosas y obscuras de muros, paredones y tejados : descollando
por encima de ellos surgian los contornos de torres y campanarios,
cuyos puntiagudos chapiteles, cubiertos de pizarra, recogfan el escaso
claror de las estrellas ; aca y alia rompian la superficie negra de las
fachadas los rectangulos de luz amarillenta que forman los balcones
alumbrados interiormente, y al traves de algun vidrio brillaba el
resplandor solitario de una lampara con su pantalla de color; de
las chimeneas salian nubecillas de humo, que, flotando como
manchas fugaces en la lobreguez del ambiente, se desvanecian en la
altura ; por entre las manzanas de casas, a lo largo de las calles
rectas, divisabanse las hileras de los faroles, cuyas llamas reverbera-
ban en cristales y vidrieras, 6 a trechos algun arco voltaico irradiaba
intenso fulgor blanquecino ; y de aquel conjunto de sombras esmal-
tadas de toques luminosos se alzaba el rumor confuso de mil ruidos
diversos ; rodar de vehiculos, vocear de vendedores, gritar de chicos
y cantar de criadas ; ya el tecleo de un piano, ya el lento sonar de
las campanadas de un reloj."

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 203

Tormes, in which Lazaro is transformed into a tunny-
fish. The reason given by Sefior Perez Galdos is,
however, excellent : " To this sad dwelling (the silent
depths of the Tagus) come those who by their
loquacity have drowned the will and thought of
Spanish life in an ocean of words. Nearly all those
here present are orators. They spoke much, and did
nothing. Some of them are masters of high-sounding
phrases, conjurers who, by the magic of their art and
the vanity of their rhetoric, transformed the tower
of eloquence into a tower of Babel." The theme of
the book is that Don Carlos de Tarsis, the young
Marque's de Mudarra, deputy for a district of the
geographical existence of which he has but a vague
idea, who lives at Madrid, and spends with both
hands the money drained from his estates, is magically
changed into a farm-labourer on his land, or rather,
on the land that was his, and now belongs in part to
his agent, in part to his usurer. For to meet the
expenses of his idle and dissipated life he must have
money at any cost ; but when the rents of his tenants
are raised they emigrate, and his agent, who attributes
the backwardness of agriculture in Spain to the fact
that " the great land-owners live far from their estates
as though they were ashamed of them," supplies him
with ever-diminishing sums, till he is reduced to
penury and usurers. Tarsis recognizes that he is
a most unworthy acolyte of Idleness, and that his
only merit is " the brutal sincerity of his pessimism,"
but he " would rather die than work." So far the
character is drawn from life, and it is only in the

204 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

vagueness of the subsequent enchantments that
the effect of the novel becomes veiled and uncertain.
From a farm-labourer he successively becomes shep-
herd, quarryman, tramp, and criminal — all with much
needless magic — till, by the final ordeal of silence in
the golden Tagus, he is restored to his original being
as Marques de Mudarra, a chastened and a wiser
marquis. Stress is laid on the miserable state of the
poor, compared with the immunity of the rich.
Famishing men are dragged off to prison for rooting
up onions on a rich man's estate, and shot down by
the Guardia Civil when they try to escape — the
official report runs : " the prisoners attempted to
escape, and were overtaken by an accident from which
a natural death ensued." There is perhaps a greater
air of reality about the account of the rich Caciques,
owners of vast estates or latifundios, who pay to the
Treasury but a tenth part of the proper land-tax,
who falsify returns at elections, protect criminals, and
assault honest folk, while the judges are their creatures.
This Caciquismo is part of the deplorable administra-
tion of Spain. Seiior Perez Galdos who, as a native
of the Canary Islands, has the double advantage of
looking at Spain as it were from within and from
without, returns to the question of words and deeds,
the wealth of words and the scantiness of action, with
an insistence which must be excessively annoying to
a Spanish reader. Yet he does not despair of Spain's
future. He sees hope in the proved vitality of the
race, in its quick recoveries after misfortune, its
heroism even under self-inflicted sufferings: "The

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 205

ineffable follies of my sons have plunged me (i.e.
Spain) in despair, and in the darkness of despair my
death has seemed certain and inevitable. And then
in some terrible crisis that appeared to ensure my
destruction, I have revived when they were carrying
me from the death-bed to the grave."

The best work of Pereda was of the Mountain,
Valera and Fernan Caballero write of Andalucia,
Palacio Valdes of Astiirias, and similarly the Gallegans,
Valle-Inclan and Senora Pardo Bazan have found their
best inspiration in Galicia, and Vicente Blasco Ibanez
in his native Valencia. Valencia is a fertile land of
fierce heat and dazzling light — the light so wonderfully
reflected in the work of the Valencian painter Joaquin
Sorolla, Blasco Ibanez has written some striking
novels that have no connection with Valencia, but
his best and most delightful work is steeped in the
life of the immense Valencian plain (in " La Barraca,"
an intense story of a boycott of the Huerta) ; of the
city of Valencia (in " Arroz y Tartana ") ; of the ricc-
orrowino- fever- stricken marshes of the Albufera,
famous for its fishing and shooting, near Valencia
(" Carias y Barro ") ; of the fishermen and smugglers of
El Grao and the Valencian coastline (" Flor de Mayo");
of love among the oranges in the orchard of Spain
(" Entre Naranjos "). Blasco Ibanez excels in portray-
ing the lives and thoughts and struggles of the simple
fisherman and peasant — hardworking as Batiste, or
magnificently idle as Pimento ; and in describing
popular customs and traditions, — a simple procession
in floodtime (as in " Entre Naranjos ") or the dances

20G THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and festeigs, courtings, of the allots and atlotas of Ibiza
(in " Los Muertos mandan "). The hero of " Los
Muertos mandan" (1909), Don Jaime or Chaume, is
not a peasant, but a member of an ancient family of
Mallorcan nobles, hemmed in by tradition and in-
herited instincts. The background, however, of
descriptions of Mallorca and lawless peasant life in
Ibiza, with its woods and orchards and white farms
girt by a green transparent sea, contribute more
powerfully to the charm of the book than the wrest-
ling of Don Jaime against the clinging influence of
the innumerable dead, who still prevail. But, indeed,
Blasco Ibanez' presentation of any strenuous life-
struggle is forcible and imposing. It reflects his own
personality. His creed is one of restless striving and
discontent with the apathy too frequent in Spain.
His activity is immense: though little over forty
years of age, his novels are already many in number,
short stories and articles are continually appearing
from his pen, he lectures, travels, translates, publishes,
controls a Valencian paper, El Pueblo, and till the
autumn of 1908 represented Valencia in Parliament
as a Republican; now his energies are occupied in
founding two towns — to be called New Valencia and
Cervantes — for colonies of Valencians in the Argentine.
Blasco Ibanez once wrote a long novel of the
French Revolution, " Viva la Republica ! " and in his
ideas and in his art the influence of France has, no
doubt, been very strong. His ideas sometimes
trespass on his art, as in " La Catedral," where, in the
person of Gabriel Luna, he declaims tediously and

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 207

without mercy. His novels, as a rule, show an
admirable unity. In each of his heroes we see
Blasco Ibaiiez : but Blasco Ibanez entirely identified
with the peasant Batiste (in " La Barraca "), or the
painter Renovales (in " La Maja Desnuda "), or the
Socialist Luna (in " La Catedral "), or the bull-fighter
Gallardo (in " Sangre y Arena "). His very manner
catches the atmosphere and colour of the surround-
ings he describes. He becomes vulgar in the descrip-
tions of commercial, crowded Valencia, wearisome in
details of the feasts of its bourgeois and the various
foods of its market-place (in "Arroz y Tartana");
he can be magnificently simple, with the soul of a
peasant or a fisherman (in " La Barraca " and " Flor
de Mayo "), and the fertile Huerta gives free scope to
his luxuriant art, his overflow of poetry and imagi-
nation. This power of concentration, which Blasco
Ibanez possesses in so high a degree, is rare in Spanish
literature. The heroes of Blasco Ibaiiez' novels are men
strong to labour, persistent before defeat. They are
almost always defeated and die, Gallardo in the arena,
Luna assassinated in Toledo Cathedral, the Pascuals,
fishermen of three generations, drowned in storms oft
the Valencian coast. But the dominant note of his
novels is still "E pur si muove," and in spirit his
heroes are as unconquerable as Don Quixote. He
has Zola's power of describing crowds ; in " La
Horda " appears the multitude of hucksters and street-
sellers that haunt the Madrid Rastro ; and similarly
the background of " Luna Benamor " (1909) is formed
by a vivid description of Gibraltar, with its motley

208 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

crowd of Spaniards and Jews and Moors and English-
men. His prose is suited to these descriptions ; it is
living, coloured, tumultuous, sometimes hurried and
careless — a Spanish critic speaks of his barbarismos
gramaticales. From so voluminous and passionate
a writer we should expect nothing of the polished or
the exquisite, his work is in the rough ; in a sense its
incorrect ardour is Spanish, but its persistent energy-
is a refreshing note in Spain, and may well cover an
occasional fault of taste or an unccrammatical sentence
here and there. His works are nearly always striking
and original, however hurried may have been their
composition.

It has been remarked that the younger Spanish
novelists are rather thinkers than artists, and Pio
Baroja, Martinez Ruiz {Azorin) and Valle-Inclan
have introduced an almost alien note into Spanish
literature. It is significant that two at least of
these writers, Azorin and Pio Baroja, are keen
admirers of the essentially intellectual art of El
Greco : Theotocopuli has cast over them the spell of
his ascetically thin figures and cold attenuated tints.
Pio Baroja is almost Russian in his pitilessly accurate
descriptions, in his rebellion against the facts of life
and his championship of the persecuted — outcasts,
criminals, and vagabonds. In "La Ciudad de la
Niebla " (1909), " The City of Fog," he brings his clear,
almost photographic, vision to bear on London, and
chiefly on the dingier districts, Bloomsbury, Covent
Garden, the squalid labyrinth of streets off Shaftes-
bury Avenue, the Docks, the Embankment. Similarly

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 209

in " Cesar 6 Nada " (1910) he continues to write in
a spirit of mocking reckless individualism. The
narrative is but a slender thread to string together
his observations of men and places.1 A zorin, again,
is not concerned with the form of his novels. He is
a thinker, a psychological analyst, who deliberately
disregards construction. Yuste, in " La Voluntad,''
voices the author's opinions ; " Particularly," he says,
the novel must have no plot ; life itself has no plot :
it is varied, many-sided, floating, contradictory —
everything except symmetrical, geometrical, rigid, as
it appears in novels." The novel must give frag-
ments, separate sensations. In " Las Confesiones de
un pequeno filosofo " Azorin gives us his original
impressions, his fragmentary sensations of " figures et
choses qui passaient " in a style full of poetry and
charm. His " La Voluntad " is a book very modern
in its restless thought and individualistic philosophy.
It has that originality of which Yuste, the philo-
sopher of the book, speaks as consisting in " some-
thing undefinable, a secret fascination of thought, a

1 "Cesar 6 Nada" is the first of a trilogy entitled "Las
Ciudades"; another trilogy, "El Mar," is begun with "Las In-
quietudes do Shanti Andia " (1911), a vivid disconnected narrative
concerning the lives of adventurous sailors of the Basque coast in
the little fishing-harbour of Luzaro and in their distant voyages.
The style, or absence of style, is clear, transparent, as it were brittle
with the shock of abrupt short sentences, interspersed with sonorous
Basque names and rough snatches of Basque song. In Basque, too,
are the indications of the site in which lie buried the coffers of gold
coins hoarded by a miserly slave trader. But the book ends with
the sad reflection : "No one now in Luzaro is willing to be a sailor.
Los vascos se retiran del mar."

210 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

mysterious suggestiveness of ideas." The rare charm
of Azorin's style and his skill in descriptions, emotion
del paisaje, imaginatio locorum, clothe with serenity
his "obstinate questionings of sense and outward
things," and with peace his purely intellectual spirit
and disquieting irony. With Ram6n del Valle-
Inclan, again, construction and plot are secondary.
The action is slightly sketched in his novels, but
incidents and persons are thrown into high relief by
the delicate and original character of his style. It is
a style built up of all that is rare and exquisite, with
a sobriety that chisels a finished picture in a single
phrase. In " El Resplandor de la Hoguera," for
instance, a green path leading from a small Basque
village to its cemetery is simply described as " todo
en paz de oracion," and such lonely word pictures
abound in his writings. His latest work, a trilogy,
is " La Guerra Carlista," and the action of the first
part, "Los Cruzados de la Causa" (1908), passes in
a village of Galicia. The haughty, great-hearted
Gallegan hidalgo Don Juan Manuel, perhaps the best
of Valle-Inclan's vivid character-sketches, appears in
this as in many others of his novels. The second
part, " El Resplandor de la Hoguera " (1909), follows
the broken movements of the guerilla fighting in the
intricate Basque country; and the third part (each
part forming, however, a separate novel), " Gerifaltes
de Antafio " (1909), describes the furtive but daring
tactics of that sinister Carlist cabecilla, Manuel Santa
Cruz, priest of Hernialde, leading his men at night,
"swift and silent as a wolf," by labyrinthine

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 211

mountain paths, past maize-fields and chestnut-trees
and vineyards, and scented meadows under the
stars, or ordering: execution after execution of
men and women " with a mystical coldness and in-
ternal peace." His cruelty was that of the peasant
who lights a fire to destroy the plagues of his vine-
yard. He watched the smoke go up as an evening
sacrifice —

Lo que a unos encendia en amor, a los otros los
encendia en odio, y el cabecilla pasaba entre el in-
cendio y el saqueo, anhelando el amanecer de paz
para aquellas aldeas humedas y verdes, que regulaban
su vida por la voz de las campanas, al ir al campo, al
yantar, al cubrir el fuego de ceniza y llevar a los
pesebres el recado de yerba. Era su crueldad como
la del vinador que enciende hogueras contra las
plagas de su vina. Miraba subir el humo como en
un sacrificio, con la serena esperanza de hacer la
vendimia en un dia del Sefior, bajo el oro del sol y
la voz de aquellas campanas de cobre antiguo, bien
tanidas."

It is difficult to analyse the fascination of these
novels. Their incidents seem trivial enough and the
characters speak in thin, broken sentences ; but the
effect is a marvellously vivid picture of the flickering
scenes of the last Carlist war and the hill tactics of
the cabecillas. The thin lines are due not to any
poverty of inspiration but to the restraint of a con-
summate artist. The most recent Spanish novelist of
note is Ricardo Leon, a young writer from Malaga,
whose first novel, " Casta de Hidalgos," was published

212 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

in the autumn of 1908, followed by " Comedia Senti-
mental " in 1909, and " Alcala de los Zegries," " La
Escuela de los Sofistas " (a volume of dialogues), and
" El Amor de los Auiores" in 1910. These books are
the work of a writer who has read and assimilated
the best of Spanish literature from its earliest begin-
nings, chronicles, legends, scrranillas, fervent religious
treatises. His style is, indeed, not unworthy of the
Spanish mystics. It has at once richness and sobriety,
it is steeped in archaic humanism, but tinged with
modern sadness and disillusion ; it is, as the author
might himself call it, " un castellano de clasico sabor."
It has in it nothing strained or artificial, being, rather,
the flowing expression of a mystical intensity. He
gives admirable pictures of the thoughts and lives of
old-fashioned proud hidalgos, " after the pattern of
the ancient hidalgos of Castille," such as Don Juan
Manuel, who lives in ruinous Santillana with its
sadness of centuries, tristeza milenaria, in " Casta de
Hidalgos ; " or of serious, reserved philosophers, such
as Don Juan Antonio in " Comedia Sentimental."
" Alcala de los Zegries " contains many passages of
noble Spanish prose, and others of psychological
interest ; but it is for the most part concerned with
politics and party strife. The Spaniards, as a rule,
are more interested in politics than in literature.
Valera's celebrated " Pepita Jimenez " brought him
no more than eight thousand reales, or under £80,
and Senor Unamuno, the Rector of Salamanca Uni-
versity, a prominent Spanish thinker and writer, has
declared that literary opinion in Spain is formed by

THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL 213

some five hundred persons, " quinientas personas mal
contadas." The novelists may protest, but the novel
gains. There is no temptation to write in order to
please the taste of a public which does not exist. If
there is something commercial in the methodical out-
put of Perez Galdos' or Blasco Ibafiez' novels, com-
mercialism has certainly, hitherto, had but little part
in Spanish literature. Limited, unliterary Spain has
had this advantage. The world's debate has not
vulgarized it; a half-culture has not dragged down
the novel to flamboyant, self -advertising methods.
The novel in Spain is at its best when it rejects, or
has not come into contact with, foreign influences.
It can be realistic without thought of this or that
school. It fascinates by its original flavour and
scent of the soil.

XX
NOVELS OF GAL1CIA

THE inhabitants of Galicia have been held
to be the Boeotians of Spain, yet the
fact that in the political world many
eminent persons are Gallegans seems to
show that Galicia has been maligned. To Galicia, too,
belong two gifted modern writers, the Condesa
Emilia Pardo Bazan and Don Ramon del Valle-Inclan.
Senora Pardo Bazan belongs to the older group of
Spanish novelists ; born in 1S51,1 she published her
two well-known novels of Galicia, " Los Pazos de
Ulloa," and "La Madre Naturaleza," in 1886 and
1887, and " De mi tierra," a book of scenes and essays
of Galicia, in 1888. It is as a regional novelist that
Senora Pardo Bazan has won her most glorious
laurels. " Galicienne ella adore les choses de la
Galice," says M. Ve'zinet,2 and he adds that she
develops the same subjects as French naturalists, but
avoids the licentiousness of which they are so fond.

1 Sis years after Galdds, sixteen before Blasco Ibanez, one before
Alas and Picon, and two before Palacio Valde's.

* F. Vezinet, " LesMaitres du Roman EspagnolContemporain,"
Paris, 1907.

NOVELS OF GALICIA 215

The multitude of her tasks and interests has neces-
sarily hampered her art as a novelist. " She has
unfortunately diffused her energies in all directions,"
says Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly. " No one can succeed
in everything — as a poet, a romancer, an essayist, a
critic, a lecturer, and a politician. Yet the Condesa
Pardo Bazan is all this, and more. We would gladly
exchange all her miscellaneous writings for another
novel like ' Los Pazos de Ulloa.' " 1

" Los Pazos de Ulloa " is a novel impregnated
with the atmosphere of Galicia. Los Pazos is a
large country-house in a remote valley of maize and
vines and chestnuts, reached on horseback through
a desolate wolf-country, pais de lobos. Its furni-
ture is rickety, its window-frames have no glass,
though it is not so ruinous as Los Pazos de Limioso
some leagues away, which lacks even window-
frames. The village priest of Ulloa has but two
devotions, those of the jarro and the escopeta, the
wine-jar and the gun ; the drinking of water and
the use of soap he holds alike to be effeminate. The
Marques de Ulloa, too, frank, noble at heart, but
cynical, often brutal, spends much of his time at vil-
lage fairs, and shooting partridges in the maize or
among pines and scented hill-plants. He is totally
in the power of his servant Primitivo, who manages
his estates. Primitivo, too, holds the peasants, as he

1 Indeed, in reading the more recent novels by Sefiora Pardo
Bazan, " La Quimera," or " La Sirena Negra," or " Diilce Duefio "
(1911), striking and original as they arc, one cannot help looking
back from them somewhat regretfully to her Galician novels of the
eighties.

216 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

says, in the palm of his hand. They are patient
workers who, however, in the opinion of the Marques
de Ulloa, need a strong hand to control them — some
one like Primitivo que les de ciento de ventaja en
ficardia, that is, who will know two tricks to their
one. When the Marques disburdens himself to the
new chaplain, Don Julian, in the wild neglected
garden, on the subject of Primitivo, he becomes aware
by a rustling in the undergrowth that Primitivo has
been listening to the outburst. When, as a first step
to freedom, he determines to leave Los Pazos on a
visit to his uncle at Santiago de Compostella, Primi-
tivo makes no open opposition, but the mare is unshod,
the. donkey has been mysteriously wounded. The
Marques and Julian determine to go on foot to Cebre,
where they will take the diligence. The path grows
wilder, the woods close in more thickly, a cross shows
where a man has been killed, there is no sound but
that of the woodcutters among the chestnuts. The
Marque's, keenly alert, sees the glint of a gun's barrel
in the brushwood pointing at the chaplain, who is
held to be the instigator of this rebellion. It is Primi-
tivo "out shooting." The book is a gloomy picture
of a rich country ruined by mismanagement, under-
hand dealing, and ignorance. The Marques de Ulloa's
agent has the peasants so completely in his power
that he is able to turn the scale of an election. He
began by methodically robbing his master in the
administration of his estate, and the money so ob-
tained he lends to the peasants, who are driven to
borrow that they may be able to continue to work

NOVELS OF GALICIA 217

their land. Primitivo charges an interest of eight per
cent, (per month), and in years of famine he raises the
interest. The country and its inhabitants are de-
scribed with a master-hand. Don Ramon del Valle-
Inclan is one of the new school of Spanish novelists,
and properly belongs to the twentieth century. He
is above all things a stylist. In his sutiles prosas
there is an exquisite restraint, with here and there a
tinge of archaism and a haunting music of soft languid
cadences. He loves the rare, the delicate, the costly,
and his art is to write of luxury in sober phrases,
instinct with sadness and the magic of regret. It is
a style of silk and cut crystal, as of silver-work or
polished ivory handled by thin ascetic fingers. » In
his four "Sonatas" (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and
Winter) we have the memoirs of the Marques de
Bradomin, the recollections of his former loves. The
scene of " Sonata de Primavera " is an Italian palazzo
with the lilacs in flower along its terraces and roses
filling the garden between the cypresses, while the
scene of " Sonata de Estio " is Mexico in all the luxu-
rious growth of its summer vegetation. In the " Sonata
de Invierno " the scene is the Carlist Court at Estella
and the setting is more gloomy. The Marquis loses
an arm in the service of King Charles VII., and from
the window of his sick-room at Villareal de Navarra
looks out on a road lined with leafless poplars and
mountains flecked with snow. But these novels do
not equal " Sonata de Otono," the scene of which is
in Senor Valle-Inclan's native Galicia. Two lines of
Verlaine in some way describe the novel : —

218 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

" Dans le vicux pare solitaire ct glace
Deux spectres ont evoque lc passe."

It is a book that may be read in little more than an
hour, yet it lias many arresting pages. A few short
sentences, words thrown here and there at random
with concealed art, give a wonderfully clear picture
of green, rainy Galicia, with its hills and streams.
We see the hills and more hills veiled in mist, the
flocks of white and black sheep, the mills, the white
smoke rising from the houses among the fig-trees, the
distant blue mountains tipped with the first snows, a
flight of doves against green fields above the tower of
a Pazo, a stony bridle-path with its bramble hedges
and great pools of water at which oxen drink, the
peasants arriving to pay their tribute of corn at the
Palacio, the shepherds coming down from the hills
wearing their capes of reeds. Women return singing
from the fountain, an old man drives on his cows
as they stop to graze, a half-witted woman gathers
scented herbs and simples that have mickle grace to
"give health to the soul and cure the ills of the herd."
And there is the Palacio de Bradomin, with its flight
of wide granite steps ; a path leads to it through the
green, drenched countryside, and the autumn sun
lights up its windows among tall chestnut-trees.
A fountain trickles and birds sing in the old garden
of myrtle, cedar, and cypress, still in late autumn
brimmed with roses, though " the paths were covered
with dry and yellow leaves that the wind swept with
a slow rustling; the snails, motionless cortio viejos
paraliticos, as old paralytics, were taking the sun on

NOVELS OF GALICIA 219

the seats of stone." The passages of the Palacio are
long and gloomy, and cold strikes through the large
silent rooms, so that in all of them logs of wood
burn brightly, stirred with tongs of " ancient bronze,
elaborately worked." The bare branches of the trees
graze the windows of the library, where, among the
parchment bindings, reigns a monastic peace, un sueTio
canonico y doctoral.

It is in a minute chiselling of details that lies Senor
Valle-Inclan's strength. The snails in the garden,
the shape of the glasses, the silver chains of a hang-
ing-lamp— nothing is passed over as insignificant.
But the details are given in few words, with the
clear precision of a skilled craftsman. And he has
the power to set his characters in strong relief. Thus
in " Sonata de Otofio " we have that muy gran senor
Don Juan Manuel, who on his first appearance
hurries away " to Villa del Prior, to thrash a clerk."
It is his custom to ride over from his country-house,
his Pazo, two leagues away, tie his horse to the
Palacio garden-gate, enter and call to a servant for
wine — for that excellent vino de la Fontela which
would be the best in the world, he says, if pressed
from selected grapes — drink and fall asleep, and then
waking up call loudly for his horse, whether it chances
to be night or day, and ride back to his Pazo. There
is a glimpse of the mother of Concha, who would tell
the children stories of the saints, and with " mystic,
noble fingers" slowly turn the pages to show them
the pictures 'of the Christian Year ; of the mother of
Xavier, who would pass her days in the recess of a

220 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

wide balcony spinning for her servants, in a chair of
crimson velvet studded with silver nails. There is
thin, white Concha, so saintly and so frail ; there is
Xavier, Marques de Bradomin, himself, the gallant,
cynical sceptic; there is the page Florisel, the old
servant Candelaria, with their rare and far-sought
names.

In " Flor de Santidad," perhaps the best of Sefior
Valle-Inclan's books, we have the same delicate
descriptions of Galicia — the sinister inn, solitary in a
gloomy brown Sierra; the shepherdess, keeping her
flock and seeing mystic visions among the Celtic
stones, yellowed with ancient lichens, liquenes mile-
narios ; the simple greeting of the peasants : Alabado
sea Dios, " Glory be to God " ; pilgrims and witches ;
charms and magical incantations to preserve the
flocks from evil ; cunning and simplicity, superstition
and crime. The same charm of mystical simplicity
and innocence that surrounds Adega, the girl
shepherdess of " Flor de Santidad," surrounds all the
heroines of Sehor Valle-Inclan's novels ; Maximina,
for instance, of the sorrowful, velvet eyes, ojos atercio-
pelados y tristes, in "Sonata de Invierno." It is in
" Flor de Santidad " that occurs the picture, repeated
in "Jardin Novelesco," of the old peasant woman
going with her little grandson to find him a master.
They meet the Archpriest of Lestrove, who is riding
leisurely — de andadura mansa y doctoral — to preach
at a village festival. " May God give us a holy and
good day." The Archpriest draws in his mare. " Are
you going to the fair ? " he asks. " The poor have

NOVELS OF GALICIA 221

nothing to do at the fair. We are going to look for
a master for the boy." "And does he know his
catechism?" "Yes, Senor, he knows it. Poverty
does not prevent from being a Christian." The
grandmother leaves the nine-year-old child in the
service of a blind beggar. " To be the servant of a
blind man is a position many would like to have,"
says the beggar, and the new Lazarillo answers
sorrowfully, " Si, Senor, si." As she watches them
go slowly away along the road through the wet green
country, she murmurs, drying her tears : " Nine years
old and already earning the bread he eats. Glory be
to God."

Incidents and characters are thrown into the relief
given by the peculiar and original magic of Senor
Valle-Inclan's delicately chiselled prose. There is in
this prose something icily fresh, something of lilacs
and hydrangeas, vague reminiscences of the silver
tinkling of voices in a glass-roofed market, or of the
swish of a scythe in wet grass. The words are
cunningly weighed and chosen and set as gouttes
d' argent d'orf Surer ie. And the transparent freshness
of his style is admirably suited to describe the primi-
tive simplicity and freshness of Galicia.

XXI
NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN

I. — " Savour of tiie Soil "

FIFTY years ago, before Zola and the natural-
istic school were on the lips of men, a
Spanish novelist, Jos6 Maria de Pereda,
was beginning to write who can only not
be called a naturalist, because of the associations given
to the name in France. Humour and frankness run
through Spanish literature; there is less artificial
refinement and more vigour and broadly human
sympathy than in the literature of France. The very
language is frank and outspoken rather than subtle
and insinuating. And the nobly independent character
of Spaniards of all classes counts for much in the
admirable sanity of Spanish realism. "Our lowest
social strata," says the Condesa Pardo Bazan, " differ
not a little from those described by Zola and the
Goncourts." The Spanish realist has thus no cause
to dissect common people and vulgar events from a
superior point of view, putting on gloves, as it were,
to keep his hands clean. He knows that virtue
perches in strange places and learns to see le sublime

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 223

d'en has, and there is a wide gulf between French
naturalism and Spanish realism. Pereda,1 a hidalgo
of the old school, born at Santander on the 6th
of February, 1833, spent the greater part of his
life in the Montana, at Santander, or at his country
estate of Polanco, only leaving Cantabria to study for
a few years at Madrid, and later to sit for a few
months in the Cortes as a Carlist. The rest of his
life he passed among his family and books and
friends in his beloved Montana.2 His friend in
private life, Sefior Perez Gald6s, describes him as
dark, sunburnt, of medium height, with moustache

1 " Lo trait essenticl du realisme de Peroda c'est la sympathio
avec laquelle il d6crit lcs mceurs populaires, sans optimisms outre,
mais avec une divination profonde de lour poesie intime. Pereda
aimo le peuple par temperament d'artiste, pour ce que celui-ci a
de pittoresque et d'original ; il l'aime aussi en homme et en chr6tion,
comme une humanit6 plus simple, aux sentiments spontanes et naifs.
II ne nous dissimule pas sa grossieretd et ses miseres mais il nous
ouvre les ycux sur ses vortus ignorees ; jusque chez les etres degrad6s
par le vice, il nous montre quelque noble instinct qui survit ot sc
reveille a l'occasion. Et ce realisme, qu'illumino toujours un rayon
d'ideal, respecte l'hommo en le peignant memo dans ses vulgarit6s
ou ses laidcurs." Boris do Tannenberg. L'Espagne litt6raire.
Paris, 1903.

• The country between Burgos and the Atlantic, known as the
" Montana" with Santander for its capital, is a district of con-
tinuous mountains and hills and steep meadows and maize-fields,
with scarcely an inch of level ground. The hills far up are covered
with chestnut and oak, beech, walnut and sycamore; rushing
streams are hidden in deep wooded clefts, and rough walls of stones
divide field from field, where the reapers, with difficulty wielding
their scythes, have but a precipitous foothold. The villages and
scattered farms are of massive yellow stone, with roofs of deep-
brown tiles and wide balconies suspended by grey wooden posts
from the projecting eaves.

224 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

and pointed beard, of a character fundamentally
Spanish, and of very nervous temperament, with a
horror of conventionality and pretence. It was about
the year 1859 that custom and character sketches
from Pereda's pen began to appear in a Santander
paper, La Abeja Montaiiesa. They were collected
in 1864, and published under the title of " Escenas
montanesas." " Escenas montanesas " gives the essence
of Pereda's art, and, though he later wrote long novels
and occasionally attained an admirable unity of treat-
ment, the delight is still in the descriptions of fast-
vanishing customs and in the characters of his peasants
and fishermen rather than in the thread of the action,
which is generally slight ; and the strength of his
novels lies not in their heroes and heroines but in
the secondary figures and the side-shows. " Escenas
montanesas" shows us life in Santander and the
neighbouring mountain-country as it was half a
century ago, and as it now lives permanently in
Pereda's art. Scenes and people are presented to us
with extraordinary vividness, and only now and then
the sketches read almost too much like observations
taken directly from the note-book. We have the
picaresque sketch of the raqwero, the Santander
gamin who lives by petty larceny from ships along
the quays ; the old-fashioned household in a mountain
village — by a hereditary privilege Saint John is
looked upon as one of the family, and the Saint's
procession raiment figures in the washing list; the
wake at a village funeral, with the frequent toast>
" to the glory of the dead," & la buena gloria del

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 225

clef unto ; tia Nisca, going her long homeward journey
on foot after bidding farewell to her son on a ship
bound for " the Indies," and reproaching the unfertile
soil that causes its sons to enriorate, though there is
a song that men who go to the Indies in order to
get rich would find the Indies at home, were they but
willing to work : —

" A las Indias van los horubres
A las Indias por ganar,
Las Indias aqul las tienen
Si quisieran trabajar ; "

and especially the noble figure of tio Tremontorio (the
first and foremost of Pereda's long line of masterly
portraits in humble life, and the last of that race of
hardy fishermen who, with the Basques, rivalled
English whalers in the North Seas and made treaties
with English kings during the Middle Ages), net-
making, or eating his bread and raw bacalao on his
balcony in the squalid Calle Alta, or consoling the
wives and mothers of fishermen on the Muelle Anaos
(in " La Leva "), and dying cheerfully (in " El fin de
una raza"), after many hours of battling with the
waves, glad to die quietly in his house, although he had
nearly perished in the storm owing to his unwilling-
ness to lose an eseapulario of the Virgen del Carmen.
" We are all sailors of that further sea," he says, in
his rough language, as he lies dying, " all bound for
the same port. If the devil does not block it against
us, I to-morrow and you another day will cast anchor
there." " Suum cuique " is the longest and not the
least excellent of these Escenas. A poor hidalgo of

226 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

the mountain, Don Silvestre Seturas, visits a powerful
friend at Madrid, and is speedily disillusioned of the
capital and only court. His friend in turn ac-
companies him to his ancestral country-house, and is
delighted at first with the country and its idyllic
peace. But the rat de ville begins to discover, after
some months, that the country has neither peace nor
poetry — "Barbaras hie ego sum quia non intelligor
ulli" — and returns to Madrid. Several incidents
contribute to his change of opinion, incidents which
reveal the character of the peasants and illustrate the
fact that Pereda, while he makes us love the peasants
of the Montana, is never blind to their faults and
weaknesses. The rich madrileno had decided to give
a clock for the tower of the village church. But
distrust occupies a large place in the character of the
villagers, and they fear the rich even when bringing
gifts. What hidden intention is there in this un-
wonted generosity? The Mayor calls the Council
together, and the result is a long document for the
donor to sign. He is to undertake to place the clock
in the tower at his own cost ; he is to give an annuity
of two thousand reales to meet any expenses con-
nected with the clock ; he is to build another tower if
the present one falls down " in my time or in that of
all the generations and heirs that may come after
me " ; he is to pay for all lawsuits arising from the
clock in the village, or in the neighbourhood. When
he tears up the paper, the villagers' suspicion of some
afterthought in his gift is irrefragably confirmed.
Lawsuits are the passion of the Mountain. One has

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 227

continued in Don Silvestre's family for seven genera-
tions, and he himself, having through poverty to
choose between remaining a bachelor all his life and
giving up the lawsuit, chooses the former without
wavering. The last straw in his friend's patience is a
lawsuit drawn up against him because, when he was
out shooting, part of a wall of loose stones round a
peasant's fields crumbled down shortly after he
happened to have fired at a bird.

"Bocetos al temple" (1876), and "Tipos Trashu-
mantes " (1877), show the same power of keen observa-
tion. Pereda, who treats the failings of the peasants
with unsparing, but withal benevolent humour,
becomes merciless and even cruel when dealing with
the pretentiousness of the vulgar and the inanity of
rich desceuvres. It has been wittily said of him that
" he reverses the apostolic precept : so far from suffer-
ing fools gladly, he gladly makes fools suffer."
Without going outside his province he found matter
ready to his hand in the veraneantes, the flaneurs
from Madrid, who passed the hot months in Santander.

Thus in "Tipos Trashumantes " he pillories the
sabio, the learned man, who allows that Cervantes
was not an entirely common man, but regrets that
neither Cervantes nor Calderon possessed the " philo-
sophy of aesthetics," or who despises the inhabitants
of Santander because they have not heard of Jeeeguel
(Hegel) ; the literato or journalist who, because a
speaker in Cortes had rendered Dante popular by a
quotation, murmurs, " come corpo morto cade " if he
drops his stick or cigar ; the barber who misses in

228 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Santandcr that indefinable " air " of Madrid ; — in
fact, a procession of quacks and knaves, and fools
and snobs : perhaps the only " sympathetic " figure is
that of the Baron de la Rescoldera, who " has never a
good word nor a bad deed." It is pleasant to turn
back to village scenes in " Tipos y Paisajes" (forming
a second part of " Escenas montanesas," 1871). Here
we find the enriched " Indian " (that is a montanes
who has returned to his country after making a
fortune in South America) ; the schoolmaster, in a
serviceable coat of black, who writes letters for the
whole village, and shuts himself up in his house to
get, if not drunk, at least very intoxicated ; the
peasant Bias, who, after inheriting thirty thousand
dollars, is miserable, but feels that he must live como
un senor now that he is rich, and dismisses as a
temptation to be resisted the wish to go as of old,
with goad on shoulder, along the high-road by the
side of his oxen ; the practical, rough, kindly priest,
Don Perfecto ; Don Robustiano, an old-fashioned
hidalgo, who does not allow the modern use of
matches in his household, and who, from the
experiences of his own poverty, is not easily misled,
when he visits a neighbouring hidalgo, by the
excuses for "my wife and daughter at church." "I
see through you," says Don Robustiano to himself,
" no doubt they are hidden away in some corner of
the house for lack of clothes." But especially is the
sketch entitled El Amor de los tizones admirable and
worthy of Cervantes. It is a description of a rustic
gathering or tertulia in the kitchen of one of the

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 229

poor houses of a mountain village. The peasants —

each of them a clearly defined character — enter one

by one with the greeting, " Dios nos acompafie " or,

" Dios sea aqui," and round the log fire, the flicker of

the flames lighting up their faces against the immense

smoke-blackened chimney, they pray a rosario for

the dead, or tell stories of brigands, and witches, and

enchantments. "Los hombres de pro" (originally

published with " Bocetos al temple ") and " El Buey

Suelto" (written in 1877) are still collections of

sketches, the first of a canvassing for an election in

rural parts of Spain, the second, of the miseries of

bachelors, and the scenes in both are touched with

Pereda's vividness and humour. Pereda, as a novelist

proper, begins with "Don Gonzalo Gonzalez de la

Gonzalera" (written in 1878), which describes the

effects of the revolution of 1868 on a small village

of the Mountain, with " De tal palo tal astilla" (1879),

an answer to Perez Galdos' " Dona Perfecta," " El

Sabor de la Tierruca " (1882) and "Pedro Sanchez"

(1883). " El Sabor de la Tierruca " (Savour of the Soil)

is a whole-hearted book of the Montana ; its serenity is

scarcely disturbed by the frequent village fights and

rivalries in which the weapons are stout sticks cut

from the mountain-side. The book is filled with a

fresh and acrid smell of the earth and autumn scents,

and has the peace of still days when not a leaf stirs,

and there is no movement in the ripe and yellow

maize-fields. It is a life lived and felt by the author

and not superficially observed, so that there is no trace

of artificiality or false sentiment in the descriptions.

230 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Cumbrales and Rinconeda are rival villages, Cum-
brales lying high among orchards, Rinconeda lower
down on the edge of the plain, in thick oak and
chestnut woods. Rinconeda rejoices when the raging
dbrego, the south wind, sweeps in furious gusts from
the hills and ravages Cumbrales ; Cumbrales rejoices
when the rain turns every street of Rinconeda into a
rushing torrent. The characters of the inhabitants of
Cumbrales are drawn with all Pereda's skill ; Juan-
guirle, for instance, a rich, hard-working peasant, the
simple, sensible Mayor of Cumbrales ; Baldomero, who
"cannot understand how doing nothing, thinking of
nothing, troubling about nothing, can be unpleasant
to any sensible person " ; his father, Don Valentin,
" hero of Luchana " and worshipper of Espartero, who,
after a frugal meal, says to his son that it is not the part
of good Liberals to be so indulging themselves when
the Carlists are flaunting " the black flag of tyranny,"
to which Baldomero answers laconically that it would
have sounded more convincing before the meal. There
is an epic fight between the two villages which rages
so violently that the Mayor, Juanguirle, in vain
attempts to stop it " in the name of la Josticia, in
the name of the law, of la Costitucion, of God Him-
self, if necessary, since, for lack of a better, I am now
His representative here." A few moments afterwards
sad to relate, Juanguirle, stung by an insult hurled at
Cumbrales, is in the very thickest of the fray. In
" Escenas montanesas " Pereda had slightly sketched a
deshoja, the harvest task of separating the ripe cob
of maize from its sheath. A certain number of cobs

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 231

(from two to six) are set aside from each large basket-
ful for the poor, for the souls in purgatory, and other
pious purposes. In " El Sabor de la Tierruca " the
scene is described more fully. The workers, over fifty
in number, sing songs and slow ballads as the heaps
of shining }^ellow cobs and the heaps of crisp, white
leaves grow and grow, and their singing is accompanied
at intervals by the noise of torrents of maize-cobs
emptied from the baskets. We have, too, a description
of a derrota, when flocks and herds are turned out
promiscuously to graze, of the game of cachurra, a
kind of rustic hockey, and the simple feasts of roasted
chestnuts with a bota of wine. Yet all is not "jest
and youthful jollity." The peasants, in their prudent
distrust, have a keen eye for witches, and a weak old
woman, of few words, poor and lonely, and in league
with the Devil, plays a sadly large part in the history
of Cumbrales. So in " Tipos y Paisajes," the witch is
feared not only by the boys whom she surprises steal-
ing the grapes in the garden of her hut, but by the
whole village. If a cow dies, it is the fault of the
witch ; if a man spends his days drinking in the tavern,
the misery of his family is traced, not to him, but to
the witch.

II. — "On the Heights"

In " Pedro Sanchez " Pereda, not without trepida-
tion, travelled outside his native region to Madrid,
then, in 1854, " a large tumbledown village, parched,

232 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

old, and dirty ; " 1 but Pedro Sanchez is a montanes,
and the first part of the book, before he leaves his
native Montana, in style far exceeds the rest. The
chief2 works of Pereda, after "El Sabor de la Tierruca"
and "Pedro Sanchez," were "Sotileza" (1885), "La
Puchera " (1889), and " Penas arriba " (1895). « Soti-
leza " is a novel of the old, now vanished, Santander.
Both in the characters and the language it is the
most local of Pereda's novels, and it is perhaps the
one which has become most famous. It has an
atmosphere of pitch and tar and sea-weed, and in the
Galle Alta nets and tattered rags hang from the
balconies, fishwives quarrel shrilly, and the strident,
piercing cry of the sardine-seller rends the air.
Andres, Muergo, and Cleto are all in love with Silda,
and Silda, growing up slight and graceful, and called
Sotileza from the name for the thin wire or o-ut to
which the fish-hook is attached, is not naturally prone
to let her feelings appear. But Andres, the son of a
prosperous captain in the merchant service, cannot
marry beneath him; Muergo, the half- brutish, half-

1 Even so, however, the clear splendour of the sky of Castillo
must have cast a charm over the place. The dominant impression
at Madrid to-day is, indeed, that of light and of open spaces, the
Puerta del Sol in a radiance of sunshine, the Carrera de San
Jeronymo going off apparently into space, the surrounding country
far-seen and treeless, the clear blue mountains, and the sky from
verge to zenith clothed with a brilliance of dazzling light so that
" ogni parte ad ogni parte splende."

2 "La Montalvez" (1888) and "Nubes de Estfo " (1891) are
perhaps his weakest works. " Nubes de Estlo " is rather wearisome
till the Duque de Canaveral arrives, "falling like a Jupiter among
little gods." " Al Primer Vuelo " (1890) is a novel of the Cantabrian
coast, but without the full salt and vigour of " Sotileza."

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 233

childish nephew of tio Mechelin and tia Sidora, with
whom Sotileza, an orphan, lives, is conveniently
drowned in a storm ; and we leave Sotileza engaged
to Cleto, the honest son of tio Mocejon, who, with his
wife, la Sargiieta, and his daughter, Carpia, are the
terror of the Calle Alta and of el pae Polinar. El
padre Apolinar is a charitable, homely priest who
receives his poor petitioners with gruff words, but
ends by giving them the little that he possesses. One
night, as he is writing his important sermon, he is
interrupted — not for the first time — by a poor woman
whose husband is ill. " Let her go to the doctor," he
exclaims ; but when he finds they are starving, " Ave
Maria Purisima," he cries twice, " and he has three
children and a wife, and there is no more honest
man." He orders his old servant to bring the puchero
containing potatoes and a little meat — the priest's
evening meal. After sniffing it deliciously, he sends
it off to the sick man, and as he resumes his sermon
he says to himself : " I have certainly read somewhere
that to keep in good health when engaged on so
difficult a task as the one I now have in hand, there
is nothing better than to go to bed hungry. Well,
there is no doubt as to my being hungry, wolfishly
hungry, to-night." Sotileza leaves an impression
of wind-driven spray and tossing seas, of manly
courageous effort and vigour and zest of living ; the
difficulty of the language and the roughness of the
life described alike contribute to the power and con-
vincing character of the work. Pereda never showed
more admirably his capacity to raise the commonest

234 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

lives, the most vulgar incidents and the language of
the street — of the strident Calle Alta from which
pae Polinar fled in comical dismay — to the region of
high art. There is something epical about his figures,
in the clamorous feuds of the fishwives not less than
in the serene heroism of the deep-sea fishermen. " La
Puchera " is only half a sea-novel. The inhabitants
of Robleces only go sea-fishing to eke out the miser-
able pittance won by cultivation of the soil. Thus
in the house of Juan Pedro (called El Lebrato) and
Pedro Juan, his son (nicknamed El Josco, from his
ferocious shyness), fishing-tackle and oars mingle with
agricultural tools. Juan Pedro is a widower, and
father and son are entirely devoted to one another,
but their house is untidy and uncomfortable for lack
of a woman's care. Pedro Juan is in love with Pilara,
Pilara is in love with Pedro Juan, her family en-
courages the match, his father asks for nothing better,
but Pedro Juan cannot break through his timidity
and bring himself to speak. At last, however, he is
emboldened when Pilara at the haymaking, in scarlet
skirt, bodice of striped blue, and headkerchief of
many colours, arranging the hay on the cart as he
forks it up to her, leaps laughingly from the last hay-
cart into his arms. " Pilara, from here to the Church
for the senor priest to marry us. Will you agree to
it ? " And she answers, " We might have been back
long ago, hijo de mi alma, if you had been different."
Though the miser of the book, Don Baltasar, is most
skilfully drawn, its interest centres more especially
in the life of Juan Pedro and Pedro Juan: Juan

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 235

Pedro, gay and talkative, appearing on festival days
with his famous sea-boots, his Cochin-China medal,
and a silk necktie ; Pedro Juan, who at his wedding,
when asked by the priest, Don Alejo, if he will have
Pilara to be his wife, answers : " And will I not
indeed ? She knows well I will, and you know it
too."

In 1895 appeared "Penas arriba" (On the heights),
the crown and masterpiece of Pereda's work. It is a
novel of the high mountain, as " Sotileza " is a novel
of the sea. Don Celso lives in Tablanca in his
ancestral house which holds lordship over a whole
valley and has had the honour of lodging two
prelates, the Bishops of Leon and Santander; but
Don Celso is old and in failing health, and he so
urgently begs his nephew Marcelo to come to him
that, against his will, the latter leaves Madrid and
his comfortable rooms in the Calle del Arenal. After
a long ride on and on over high mountain passes and
narrow, precipitous paths and haunts of bears, he
reaches Tablanca after nightfall. A whistle from his
attendant, Chisco, the barking of dogs, an uncertain
light moving to and fro, black shapes round the light,
a sound of voices, and Marcelo is received into his
uncle s arms. Next day, from the wide balconies, he
discovers the mountains on one side nearly touching
the house, on the other a chequer-work of green
meadows and yellow stubble-fields of maize against
a background of mountains green and brown and
grey, and the village among rocks and brushwood
and intricate paths. There is a saying in the

236 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

village that the largest piece of flat ground is
the floor of Don Celso's dining-room. Of the char-
acters of the book Don Sabas belongs to that noble
army of humble parish priests described by Pereda —
the village priest in " De tal palo tal astilla " ; Don
Frutos, discreet and talkative, in " Don Gonzalo " ;
the joyous priest of Robleces, regocijado de humor, in
" La Puchera," whose only vice is to go out to sea
twice a week with the fishing-boats ; and the incom-
parable pae Polinar in " Sotileza." Don Sabas has
a passion for the mountain, and, once upon the
heights, the exact word and the right phrase come
to him in which to express his enthusiasm and his
deep knowledge of their plants and animals. To
have given him a bishopric in a flat country would
have meant death to him. He is fearless and untiring
whether he is tracking a bear, or out in a snow-
blizzard on the heights to rescue some peasant or
herdsman who has not returned to the village, or
visiting the sick on a black night of storm. Don
Celso is also a noble figure, practical and imposing,
and in his immense kitchen of an evening he holds a
patriarchal gathering of peasants. We have, too, the
splendid Tolstoian figure of the hidalgo of ancient
race, Gomez de Pomar, the author of many books,
unloading a cart of hay in his simple peasant's dress.
He is a model of noble courtesy — hidalga cortesia,
his style is " spirited and vigorous, pure Castilian
untainted, as the blood that flows in his veins."
Consciously or unconsciously, it is a self-portrait of
Pereda. The book abounds in impressive scenes and

NOVELS OF THE MOUNTAIN 237

characters ; it was a subject dear to Pereda's heart,
and he produced a work which ranks among the
great novels of the world. There is a certain solidity
in Pereda's writing well suited to describe the stern
deep-shadowed mountain-country, while his unlatin
love of the wild and desolate rejoices in the hurri-
canes that tear up trees and whirl the snow-drifts
on the mountain-side. " Penas arriba " represents the
whole life and being of the author and gives us a
full measure of the true sabor de la tierruca, the
savour of the soil. In " Esbozos y Rasguiios " Pereda
ridicules those mad Cervantists who prove that
Cervantes was omniscient, an excellent theologian, a
cook, a sailor, a geographer, a freethinker, and who
will soon prove that neither is Cervantes Cervantes,
nor Don Quixote Don Quixote. But of the true
spirit of Cervantes he had imbibed a large part, even
though he never attained to his great-hearted toler-
ance and the wider outlook of those more spacious
times. His prose 1 is robust and austerely free from
foreign idioms, laden with dialect and phrases native
to the soil. It has caught the vigorous freshness of
the mountain air, and the scent of earth and woods
and moors, the rush of the sea and the elemental
simplicity of men ennobled by constant contact with
earth and ocean. Pereda wrote out of the fulness of
his heart, without seeking popularity. His rough
grandeur, rugged as the country of "Penas arriba,"
his frequent use of dialect, his untranslatableness,

1 M. Boris de Tannenberg speaks of " l'apre saveur de sa langue,
un peu rude et fruste, mais solide, musclee et haute en couleur."

238 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

make for i'ew readers. But those who, like Don
Sabas, care to leave the level country and climb the
mountain height, will find in Pereda a classic, high
and steadfast as the hills. Blindly though the iniquity
of oblivion scattereth her poppy, it is perhaps not
"prodigiously temerarious" to suspect that Pereda
may still be read when Zola is forgotten.

XXII
CASTILIAN PROSE

THE Spanish language," said an English
writer in 1701, "is properly none at
all, for if the Spaniards were to restore
to the Egyptians, Grecians, Arabians,
Moors, Jews, Romans, Vandals, Huns, Goths, French,
and, lastly, Italians, the words they have taken from
them, they must of necessity remain dumb." And,
again, the Spanish language "consists of a's and
o's, and nothing else but mouthing and grimace."
Another Englishman, sixty years later, says of the
Spanish language, that "As there is something
pompous and magnificent in the length of its words
and the sound of them, so there is also a peculiarity
in the turn and manner of their phrases and expres-
sions." In the time of Spain's greatness a larger
measure of justice is bestowed on the Spanish lan-
guage. "It is expressive, noble, and grave," says
Mme. d'Aulnoy ; " it is only our own (i.e. French)
which excels it." But with the decay of Spain's
material prosperity the language seems to have fallen
into a disrepute ; can a nation that possesses no gold

240 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

currency and no battleships possess a language or
literature worthy of the name ? It may be admitted
that many modern Spaniards themselves do not write
correct or idiomatic Spanish ; the language has been
crowded with foreign importations, and while it is
the easiest language to learn superficially, it is, by
reason of its immense wealth of words and baffling
reserves of idioms, one of the most difficult to learn
well. "The best Castilian is here spoken," said
Mme. d'Aulnoy of Burgos, and it is still in Castille
that the purest Spanish is to be learnt, in regions,
i.e. where, owing to the climate, the foreigner makes
but a briefest stay. Toledo is more likely to be visited
for two days to see its churches, than for two months
to learn the language ; it gives no inviting impression
of comfort to the stranger. In " Don Quixote " we
read that " They cannot speak so well who are
brought up in the Zocodover as those who spend the
day walking to and fro in the cloisters of the Cathe-
dral, yet all are Toledans." But although among the
peasants of Spain there are many prevaricadores del
buen lenguaje, with reckless transposition of con-
sonants (such as probe for pobre), their language is
often essentially purer and more idiomatic, with " a
peculiarity in the turn and manner of their phrases,"
than that of the reprochadores de voquibles, who cast
it in their teeth, and who would die rather than
offend la grammaire, but allow themselves the con-
stant use of foreign words and expressions in the
construction of their sentences. True Castilian has
a combined softness and vigour, enabling it to be at

CASTILIAN PROSE 241

once impassioned and concise, a harmony and strength
scarcely to be found in any other language, and a
pithiness which springs from the soil and has not its
origin in books. Many of Spain's greatest writers
have wielded lance and pen alternately ; they are not
"grammarians who hack and slash for the genitive
case," but in the clear shock and flow of vowels,
scarcely interrupted by their setting of slurred con-
sonants, we seem to hear a rumour of battle, and
their words can be, like those of St. Francis of Assisi
preaching, a modo die saette acute — very sharp arrows.
This native vigour corrects the tendency to rich
magnificence and trailing growth of words ; while
without this richness the Castilian language might
be like staccato Catalan — a succession of quick
pistol-shots, as it were, not the stately tones of an
organ. It is not too much to say that Castilian — not
the miserable Castilian of many of the newspapers
and many modern authors, but Castilian at its best —
has been excelled only by Greek. It is thus a lan-
guage truly worth studying, and it is easily learnt »
it has, next to English, the widest extension in the
world, and it possesses a splendid literature of eight
centuries, continued at the present day in a number
of characteristic and fascinating novels. Yet the
Castilian language, literarily, is so little studied that
it seems to be considered to be "properly none at
all;" and these novels when read in translations
lose their savour. Cervantes prophesied that " Don
Quixote " would be translated into all nations and
languages, but, as Dante said that poetry cannot be

Q

242 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

translated " senza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e ar-
monia," so Cervantes likens translations to the reverse
side o£ Flemish tapestries — the figures still visible,
but obscured by a crowd of thread-ends. The best
Spanish is still to be found in the writers of the
golden age of Spanish literature, and especially in the
writings of the mystics.

The style of Cervantes changes with his characters,
who are allowed to murder Castilian in Spanish-
Basque or Gascon-Catalan, but he is a master at will
of the purest Castilian, in him never divorced from
the full flavour of life, and he refers scornfully to the
spurious continuation of " Don Quixote " as " written
in Aragonese." Equally castizo, hardily idiomatic
and flavoured pungently, is the style of Quevedo. Of
modern writers, Valera and Pereda, differing so
widely, are alike in this, that they are both masters
of noble Castilian prose, and have nothing to say to
the imported phraseologies which pervade a large
proportion of modern Spanish writing. Perez Galdos,
too, has a thoroughly Spanish style, robust and
vigorous, rich in words, idiomatic. The most recent
Spanish writers in a novellizing spirit tread more
delicately ; they resemble Sancho Panza, who, " when
he was Governor, learnt to eat fastidiously, d lo
melindroso, so that he would eat grapes and even the
seeds of a pomegranate with a fork." The style of
Leon, indeed, is full and fine-sounding, and, like that
of Valera, carries us back to the writings of the
mystics in the sixteenth century; but Valle-Inclan
(guilty only very occasionally of words such as

CASTILIAN PROSE 243

madama or dandy) and Azorin have a mastery of de-
liberately thin, exquisitely clear-cut prose.1 " Llovia
menudo y ligero en aquella fertil valle del Baztan . . .";
in this passage of Valle-Inclan's "Gerifaltes de
Antaiio" (1909), as in so many others, we have a
delicate finished picture, reached after much labour of
rejection and compression, though he has the art to
conceal his affres du style. In a language so in-
exhaustibly rich as the Spanish, and with the
tendency of Spaniards to write in hurried, copious
fashion, this choice and sifting of words is welcome,
and is in no danger of being carried to excess.

1 The difference between these artists in prose may be best
illustrated by quotation : " El Cura abri6 la ventana y miro al cielo.
Apenas brillaban las estrellas. Estuvose quieto y meditando, con
los ojos fijos en la sombra de los montes. Bajo la boveda de la
noche, todos los rumores parecian llenos de prestigio. El ladrido
de los perros, el paso de las patrullas, el agua del rio en las presas,
eran voces religiosas y misteriosas, como esos anhelos ignotos que
estremecen a las almas en su noche oscura." (Valle-Inclan,
" Gerifaltes de AntaSo.") Here we have the clear thin outlines,
the studied restraint of the admirer of El Greco. In the following
passage, from Le6n's "Alcala de los Zegrfes," we find the more
sensuous glowing imagination of the Andalusian novelist : " Pue
Alfonso hacia la ventana y apoyd la ardorosa frente en los cristales.
Todo era silencio y soledad. Las estrellas oscilaban en el cielo ; la
ancha boveda, oscura, estaba acribillada de lucecillas tremulas.
Una fogata brillaba a lo lejos en el campo. Y en el silencio grave,
en la callada sombra, las puertas de bronce del misterio se abrfan de
par en par." In the hands of both writers Castilian yields a full
measure of its magic.

XXIII
TOLEDO AND EL GRECO

THE fame of El Greco1 has of late years
spread and deepened, although the full
fascination of his pictures will perhaps
never be understood, except by a few.
Of his life we have but one or two threadbare details,
and this is the more tantalizing because we feel that

1 Seilor Cossio published his well-known work, "El Greco,"
2 torn. Madrid, in 1908. The second volume consists of illus-
trations of El Greco's pictures; most of the reproductions are,
however, unfortunately somewhat indistinct. The reproductions
from photographs in a little book, "El Greco," by A. P. Calvert
and C. Gasquoine Hartley. London : John Lane, 1909, are much
clearer. The illustrations are excellent in "Le Greco." Par
Maurice Barres et Paul Lafond. Paris : Floury, as also those of
pictures by El Greco in Herr Meier Graefe's " Spanische Reise,"
Berlin, 1910. In October, 1910, appeared a short scholarly study,
" El Greco en Toledo." Por Francisco de Borja de San Roman y
Fernandez. Madrid: Suarez. It contains eighty-eight original
documents of great interest, especially the inventory of El Greco's
possessions (vienes), drawn up by his son, Jorge Manuel, on April 12,
1614, five days after El Greco's death, the discovery and publication
of which will, as the author says, give intense pleasure to all lovers
of El Greco. This contains over 100 pictures by El Greco (some un-
finished), 200 prints, 150 drawings, 15 sketches, 20 plaster models,
30 models in clay and wax, etc. Among the Greek books are
Josephus, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Homer, Aristotle's

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 245

his life and character were of a strange, alluring
interest. Before his coming to Spain, the most
interesting fact we learn concerning him is contained
in a letter of the artist Julio Clovio, written in
November, 1570: "There has arrived in Rome a
young Cretan, a disciple of Titian, and, in my opinion,
an excellent painter — parmi raro nella pittura." The
date of El Greco's birth is uncertain, but if he was a
giovine in 1570, he would hardly have been seventy-
seven at the time of his death in 1614. This assertion
as to his age was made when the date of his death
was given as 1625. It has been conjectured that it
arose from an easy confusion between sesenta and
setenta, and that he was not seventy-seven but sixty-
seven; the year of his birth would then be 1547.
The exact date of his arrival at Toledo is unknown,
but it was about the year 1575 ; certainly in or before
1577. Toledo had ceased to be the capital and court
of Spain, yet still remained the home not only of
princes of the Church, but of many men of letters,
and the Arabic MS. of " Don Quixote " was discovered
in its market-place. Its cathedral was " the richest
church in Christendom." An Italian work published

Politics and Physics, the Old and New Testaments, Lucian,
Plutarch (bite di Plutarco), iEsop, Euripides. The Italian include
Petrarca and Ariosto, but fifty more Italian books, with seventeen
in romance and- nineteen on architecture, are uncatalogued. The
commonest articles receive a quaint dignity in the old ringing
Castilian, as "quatro pares de escarpines" (four pair of socks), " un
cajon grande de pino con cinco gabetas " (a large chest of pine with
five drawers), "una alacena de madera grande" (a large wooden
cupboard), "una espada y una daga con tiros y pretina " (a sword
and dagger with their belts).

246 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

at Venice in 1563 records that "the priests reign
triumphant in Toledo — trionfano — and give them-
selves up to good living, and no one reproves them."
The power of the Inquisition was at its height.
From the gloom of the Escorial, Philip II.'s narrow,
unbending spirit found many echoes in the stern
cities of Castille. El Greco lived to see the expulsion
of the Moriscos, and the utter decay of the trade and
industry of Toledo and other cities. Antonelli's
project to make the Tagus navigable as far as Toledo
was rejected scornfully : would not God have made it
navigable had it been His will ? Yet it was the
golden age of Spanish letters, and during El Greco's
sojourn at Toledo the most humorous and broadly
human figure of all literature was being elaborated in
Cervantes' brain. El Greco died at Toledo two years
before the death of Cervantes and Shakespeare.

Pacheco says of El Greco that he was "in all
things as singular as in his paintings." Other stray
notices represent him as " a great philosopher," " elo-
quent in discourse," a witty, acute speaker — de agudos
dichos — a writer on painting, sculpture and architec-
ture. We are further told that he earned many
ducats but spent them in pomp and display, even
keeping musicians to play to him during his meals.
He would seem to have retained the soft atmosphere
of Italian luxury amid the narrow, gloomy Toledo
streets, and to have introduced an alien note of
pleasure into the cold, intense existence of Castille.
But if his life preserved about it a certain tinge of
Venice (Venice that spent what Venice earned), his

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 247

art was essentially Spanish. The mannerism of his
painting might be deemed extravagant, as his caprices
might not be understood, by many Spaniards. He
was, they might say, "too picked, too spruce, too
affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate." They
are the epithets of Holofernes describing a Spaniard ;
and what could be more Spanish than El Greco's
mingling of keen vision and realistic power as a
portrait painter with an intense, unfailing spiritual-
ism ; than his vehement, almost tortured desire to
shun the common and the vulgar — not the mere
seeking after originality but a wish to be sincere, to
express his own soul ? His manner has not the
sensuous richness of Italy but a Castilian, nay, a
Toledan austerity. It is as " a sword of Spain,
the ice-brook's temper." Already in his famous
"Expolio" (in the Sacristy of Toledo Cathedral),
painted not long after he had arrived in Spain, he
had, as Senor Cossio says, abandoned the reds and
golds of Italy for blue and carmine and ashen grey.
As to the price of this picture he had a quarrel with
the Chapter of Toledo Cathedral.1 Assessors were
appointed to value it and they found that, though
the picture was beyond all price — no tiene prescio ni
estimation — a verdict with which all who have seen
the " Expolio " will readily agree, yet, having regard
to " these poverty-stricken times," they assessed it at
nine hundred ducats, an extraordinarily high price

1 Cf . his dispute with the Church of Santo Tome as to the price
of " El Entierro," of which dispute a most interesting account is to
be found in the documents of Sefior San Roman's book.

248 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

for that period. The Chapter, on the other hand,
offered a much smaller sum, and that under the con-
dition that he should remove certain " improprieties "
— ynpropiedades — from the picture, among them the
figures of " the Virgin and the saints — las marias
y nuestra sefiora — whose presence in the picture is
contrary to the gospel, seeing that they were not
actually present." El Greco held out for his own
price, but the Mayor, siding with the Chapter, decreed
that he must either give up the picture or go to
prison, and the painter submitted. The exquisitely
beautiful figures that he was to have removed are,
however, still in the picture, as well as the other
ynpropiedades, so that he seems at least to have
defied the narrow spirit of the letter in the priests
who " reigned triumphant " at Toledo. Perhaps — in
the temper of Alonso Cano towards the Chapter of
Granada Cathedral — he threatened to destroy the
" Expolio," and the Chapter, having given him a
hundred and fifty ducats on account, would be un-
willing to lose their picture. Certainly El Greco
would not say to himself with Fra Lippo Lippi —

" they must know I
Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,
They, with their Latin ? so I swallow my rage,
Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint
To please them."

El Greco painted to please no one but himself
and his individual vision. His next great picture,
the " San Mauricio," was painted by command of
Philip II., but it did not please the King and in his life-

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 249

time was not placed in the Escorial, where it now is.
No le contents a su Magestad, says Siguenza, and he
goes on to say, " and this is small wonder, since it
pleases but few, though it is said that it shows much
art, aunque dizen es de mucho arte." It is con-
ceivable that the picture as a whole might seem ugly,
and repel, especially on a first view, before the eye
had embraced its wealth of beautiful details. The
real reason, however, of its " not pleasing " was not
the exaggerated drawing nor the harsh colouring, the
dominant note of yellow and blue, but the realistic
portrayal of the group of martyrs in the foreground.
" Saints," proceeded Siguenza, " should be painted in
such a manner that they may not take awa}7 the
desire to pray, but may rather incite to devotion."

" ' Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer,'

Strikes in the Prior I ' when your meaning's plain
It does not say to folks — remember matins —
Or, mind you fast next Friday.' "

The Spanish Church would willingly have reduced
art to skull and bones. But El Greco saw that his
Saints must be human before they could be divine.
He had now inaugurated that realism which was to
find its highest expression in the art of Velazquez,
but which is evident also in the Saints and Madonnas
of Murillo.

El Greco has not the immediate attraction and
universal appeal of Velazquez ; some of his pictures
may displease at first and only gradually make their
charm felt. What, then, we may ask, is El Greco's
peculiar fascination, the dominating power to attract

250 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

or to repel in his pictures so great that it is apt to
become almost an obsession ? Is it the truth to life,
or the aloofness from life, the clear expression of
character or the spiritual submission to divine will ?
Does it lie in his fondness for those cold, simple
colours, the pale greens and lilacs, grey and the blue
of hydrangeas or of the surface of ice, that delight the
soul of " primitive " and " decadent " alike ; in the per-
vading life and movement, the slender, lengthened
limbs and tapering figures ; in the subtle permanence
of expressions and attitudes that were " so fugitive " ?
Is it the passionate sincerity and striving that dis-
dains rest and mere complacency of work accom-
plished, the noble discontent with effects achieved,
the ceaseless longing to reach yet higher levels, till
ultimately, as in his " Asuncion," the whole picture is
moulded to a perfect realization of the soul's desire,
a harmonious unity of aspiration, " toccando un poco
la vita futura " ? Or is it the exquisite sadness, the
air of acquiescence in suffering and fate unshunnable,
or the wonderful peace and serene joy of some of his
faces ? It is a rare combination of all this that gives
the essence of El Greco's potent charm; it is the
richness of contrast so truly Spanish, the marvellous
rendering alike of heavenly things and things ter-
restrial, the wild magic of his imagination, the sober
individual alchemy of his style. In these delicate
lines, thin faces, long white limbs and restrained
colours there is a spiritual intensity that impassions
and consumes with a light and fire reaching beyond
dim mortal vision. But in the expression there is,

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 251

moreover, a softness of lingering pity, of linked
sweetness and tears for earthly sorrows, that makes
his art not cold and distant, appealing merely to the
intellect, but lovable and human ; " a thing ensky'd
and sainted," yet still bound by gold chains about the
feet of man.

The little church of Santo Tome, with its beautiful
old tower, stands but a few hundred yards from El
Greco's house at Toledo, and for this church he painted
perhaps the most beautiful and certainly the most
important of all his works — "El Entierro del Conde
Orgaz." For an artist the " Entierro " has almost as
much interest and instruction as " Las Meninas " of
Velazquez. The subject is a local legend. Saint
Augustine and Saint Stephen come down to carry to
burial the corpse of the charitable Conde de Orgaz —
of whom we read that he " employed his life in holy
works and so came to a holy death " — and the chief
citizens of Toledo mourn him. In this long line of
faces El Greco shows his full mastery as a portrait-
painter. And we may see in them all the race of
Castille — Castilian dignity, frankness, nobility, sad-
ness, resignation, pride, haughtiness, intensity, ascetic
mysticism. We seem, as we look, to hear the solemn
rhythm of Jorge Manrique's verses — *

" Este mundo es el camino
Para el otro, que es morada

1 The temptation is great to quote the Coplas from beginning to
end. They have been excellently translated by Longfellow, but all
who read them in the original will be ready to say with the shep-
herd of Camoes : " Quam bem que soa o verso castelhano."

252 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Sin pesar ;

Mas cumple tener buen tino

Para andar esta Jornada

Sin errar.

Partimos cuando nacemos,

Andamos mientras vivimos,

Y llegamos

Al tiempo que fenecemos ;

Asi que cuando morimos

Descansamos.

The light of the torches burning in long thin flame
and the upward look of the priest in plain surplice
draw the eye up to the second part of the picture,
the Gloria, where the Conde de Orgaz appears before
Christ and the Virgin in a heaven thronged with
apostles and saints and supported by angels. The
beauty of the lower part is as easily recognizable as
that of a picture of Velazquez, but the Gloria takes
longer to appreciate, having a fuller measure of El
Greco's mannerism. Partly for this reason the picture
may displease at first, permanently displease if seen
once only in a cursory glance, but on a more leisured
study it assumes its right place as one of the wonder-
ful and most beautiful pictures of the world. It
requires time, too, to realize the infinite beauty of
detail, the figures on St. Augustine's robe, the scene
of St. Stephen's stoning on that of St. Stephen, and
the skill with which all monotony is avoided in the
mourners, in spite of their being nearly all of the
same height, and nearly all wearing white ruffs and
pointed beards.

In his later pictures El Greco increased the man-
nerism of his style; the figures are longer, more

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 253

angular, the intensity of expression becomes an
obsession, a paroxysm : he paints as one for whom the
the whole world has ceased to exist. Sometimes, as in
the "Baptism" at Toledo, these exaggerations seriously
spoil the beauty of his work ; but the " Asuncion " of
the church of San Vicente, at Toledo, also belongs to
his later style, and is not the least beautiful of his
pictures : in no other work of art has the sense of
motion been so marvellously expressed — the Virgin,
saints, and angels seem actually floating upwards
before our eyes. El Greco's mannerism, jene unglau-
hliche Manier, Herr Carl Justi calls it, is more
evident in some of his pictures, in others less; but
there is not a sufficiently wide gulf between them to
justify the saying that " they are so different that
they appear not to be painted by the same hand," * nor
to countenance Palomino's statement that " What he
did well no one did better, and what he did badly no
one did worse."

It was not carelessly nor ignorantly that El Greco
drew his figures out of proportion, making them pre-
ternaturally long and thin. He did so deliberately,
just as Bacon said deliberately that "In all beauty
there is some strangeness of proportion," and the
effect in El Greco's pictures often, indeed as a rule,
justifies his boldness. We see him

" Pouring his soul ; . .
Reaching, that Heaven might so replenish him,

1 " Son tan disonantes unas de otras que no parecen ser de la
misma mano " (Jusepe Martinez).

254 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

Above and through his art — for it gives way ;
That arm is wrongly put — and there again —
A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
Its body, so to speak J its soul is right."

Naturally the peculiarity of his style has at once
struck all observers. So the French have spoken of
his " maladresses enfantines, audaces troublantes," his
" attitudes strapassees," his " draperies casse'es et chif-
fonne'es a plaisir," his "dessin fantastique." So Sir
Edmund Head wrote of some of El Greco's pictures
as " extravagant in length, of an ashen-grey tone,
most singular in so fine a colourist." If only glanced
at once, this is perhaps the impression that the ma-
jority of his pictures would leave, and he thus remains
a sphinx to many. " He will always remain caviare
to the multitude," wrote Sir J. C. Robinson in 1868 ;
" the uninitiated observer passes over [his pictures]
with wonder and bewilderment, the grim angular
figures and draperies and the flickering unrest of all
the details affecting him as would a harsh tumult of
discordant sounds."

Palomino said of El Greco that "he ended by
making his painting despicable and ridiculous alike
by extravagance of drawing and harshness of colour."
His contemporaries explained the singularity of his
work either as due to madness or to craving for effect,
por valentia, para salir del dia, or to a wish to
prevent them from being confused with those of
Titian !

Not less than his drawing, El Greco's colouring
has been a stumbling-block and an offence. We read

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 255

of his " teintes presque cadavenques," " coloris grisatre,
pale blafard," "symphonies en bleu mineur ;" and Ford
characteristically wrote that his pictures were often
"as leaden as cholera morbus." After the rich reds
and golds of Italian painting, the subtler tints of El
Greco, evolved by him partly under Tintoretto's in-
fluence, partly under the influence of Toledo, could
not please his contemporaries, but we feel now that
they are no slight ingredient of his charm. In colour-
ing El Greco largely influenced Velazquez, and through
Velazquez all subsequent painting. Velazquez learnt
from him, in the words of Seiior Cossio, " his harmony
of silver greys and the use of certain carmines." But
it was not only El Greco's colouring that affected
him. Seiior Cossio sees in the construction of " The
Surrender of Breda " vague reminiscences of the " San
Mauricio," and one may also see in it reminiscences
of the " Expolio." Palomino, in his Life of Velazquez,
says that "in his portraits he imitated Domenico
Greco, for he considered that his heads could not be
sufficiently praised." Velazquez rejected El Greco's
mystic intellectuality, but possibly without El Greco's
influence the realism of Velazquez might have been
excessively exact and less inspired.

Toledo, in the words of a modern Spanish poet,
stands "dark, ruinous, forgotten and alone;" but
Domenico1 Theotocopuli, who lay there unremem-

1 Or Dominico. Sometimes he signed Domyco or Domco at the
end of documents. The fourth letter of the signature (in Greek
characters) on the "Baptism" in the Prado Gallery has all the air
of a Greek eta.

256 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

bered for three centuries, now rises to spread his fame
through the world —

" Tout passe. L'art robuste
Seul a l'eternite,
Le buste
Survit a la cite."

Foreigners from many lands climb up and down
the cobbled lanes and passages, in search of hidden
churches here and there with pictures by El Greco —
Santo Tome, San Jose, San Vicente, Santa Leocadia,
San Nicolas, and many more :

" The sanctuary's gloom no longer wards
Vain tongues from where his pictures stand apart."

He loved to paint the city, and, besides his famous
view of it, we find it in the background of his
pictures. The Cathedral and the Bridge of Alcantara
and the Castle of San Servando are perfectly distinct
in the "Asuncion " of the Church of San Vicente. The
city figures again, though less clearly, in the mag-
nificent picture of St. Martin (of Tours) dividing his
cloak, an act of charity that certainly receives a new
significance in this bleak, unsheltered Toledo country.
And Toledo, not Troy, appears in the " Laocoon," the
only picture by El Greco that has a classical subject.
El Greco, the Cretan, lived at Toledo for some forty
years, and the charm of Toledo seems to have entered
into his soul. His house was not in one of the
smothered streets, but in an open space high above
the Tagus, opposite the Synagogue of the Jews.1 It

1 Even though the house now known and shown as "la Casa del
Greco " is not that in which El Greco lived, it occupies very much

TOLEDO AND EL GRECO 257

has a cool patio with a floor of red bricks and glazed
tiles, and four white pillars, with a tiny well near the
entrance, and a grey wooden gallery above, resting on
the pillars, and open on one side, so that in spring
swallows occasionally enter and whirl round the
court. To the right a door leads to a quaint, old-
fashioned kitchen, with its immense open fire-place
and seats on either side beneath the chimney. That
El Greco, a foreigner, should have become the most
Spanish of Spanish painters, was due no doubt to the
influence exercised over him by this stern yet luring
city of Castille. It is impossible to dissociate his
colouring from the many greens and greys and browns
of the city and surrounding country, the rust-coloured
soil of the Cigarrales thinly covered with many greens
that are not green, grey hill-plants, dull tints of
thyme and olive, the shriller green of pomegranate
and other fruit-trees, the grass sun-parched to patches
of yellow. And perhaps it is not altogether fanciful
to connect the metallic gleams visible in certain lights
on the surface of the Tagus with the glazed effects so
frequent in El Greco's pictures, or even the ragged,
wind-tormented elms by the river with some of his
more extravagant figures. The city points upward
like a grey sword; and whether seen in shafts and
foils of orange light against a stormy sunset, or faint-
ing and crumbling greyly beneath a relentless sun
and sky of cloudless blue, it has the austere intensity

the same open situation ; for by the disappearance of the block of
houses belonging to the Marques de Villena, El Greco's landlord, it
steps into the first place above the river.

R

258 THE MAGIC OF SPAIN

that we find in El Greco's work. Yet, as in the
greyest pictures of El Greco occurs some relieving
touch of colour, so Toledo is not merely a monotonous
symmetry of brown or grey. A procession, white and
gold and red and purple, passes through the narrow
streets under a shower of roses from the balconies of
houses gaily hung in white and red, red and yellow ;
or the bright colours of peasants' dresses are to be
seen against the ancient Alcantara bridge as they
come in to market ; or in some street of stifling,
windowless walls that lead up to a line of blue sky
by day, and at night to a ribbon of stars, comes a
glimpse, through doors of massive ancient stone, of
a patio of bright flowers — carnations, nasturtiums,
geraniums — as one may find a picture of El Greco in
some old forgotten Church ; and beneath the yellow-
brown walls and grey rocks of the city are gardens
of fruit-trees, where in spring nightingales sing from
pomegranates in scarlet flower. It is a city of con-
tinual surprises, not to be understood or appreciated
in a single day or a single visit; it gives, like El
Greco's pictures, a strong original impression at a
first glance, but its inner being, its softer moments,
its true significance and charm it reveals only to a
patient study. Its attitude is indeed that of reserve ;
it seems to be holding judgment on modem civiliza-
tion. It represents all that is noblest, most individual,
and unbendingly austere in the spirit of Spain.

INDEX

Abenabet, King of Seville, 101

Afforestation, 99

Agriculture, 97, 203

A] of r in, 90

Alarc6n (Pedro Antonio de),

195
Alas (Leopoldo) Clarin, 150, 193,

196, 197
Alfonso, el Sabio, quoted, 98
Alhambra, The, 89
Alicante, 113, 114, 115
Almerfa, 57, 113
Altabiscar, Poem of, 62
Altamira (Rafael), quoted, 22,

25
Amadeo I., King of Spain, 43,

198-199
Andalucfa, 103, 128, 134-141,

186, 195
Andakisians, 25, 26, 90, 140, 188,

190
Andre (E. L.), 39
Antequera, 137
Anti-Clericals, 39, 40, 81, 199,

200
Aragon, 26, 100
Arenys de Mar, 104
Arriba, 75
Asturians, 26, 196
Asturias, 196
Atcburia, 64, 65
Avila, 87

Augustinians, 166, 181
Aulnoy, Mme. d', quoted, 20, 29,

52, 59, 60, 62, 239, 240

Azorfn. See Martinez Ruiz.
Azulejos, 132, 194

B

Bacon (Francis), quoted, xi, 33,

34, 41, 252
Barcelona, 88, 91, 104
Baroja (Pio), 27, 93, 208, 209
Basque Provinces, 50, 63, 66-79,

210-211
Basques, 25, 28, 61, 62, 66-79,

209, 225
Bayonne, 63
Beggars, 29, 87, 126
Behobie, bridge of, 61
Benavente (Jacinto), 27, 41
Berceo (Gonzalo de), 39, 93
Berenger (Remont), Count of

Barcelona, 159-160
Betting, 73, 74
Biarritz, 63
Bidasoa, 57-61, 65
Bilbao, 60, 88
Blasco Ibanez (Vicente), 38, 123,

149, 152, 193, 205-208
Bohl von Faber (Cecilia). See

Fernan Caballero.
Booksellers, 172
Borrow (George), 53
Brigands, 47, 194
Browning (Robert), quoted, 248,

249, 253, 256
Bullfights, 38
Burgos, 87, 158, 240
Burton's Anatomy, quoted, 88
Butler, BisJwp, quoted, 35

260

INDEX

Caciguismo, 23, 204

Cadiz, 88

Caldcr6n do la Barca (Pedro),

32, 55, 227
Cambridge, 1G5
Camoes (Luiz), quoted, 25, 26,

251
Cantabria, 63, 223-238
Cardena, 139
Carlists, 76, 78, 81, 84, 210, 211,

223, 230
Carranza, Archbishop, 165, 169,

170
Cartagena, 116
Caste j on, 158

Castelar (Emilio), 149, 19S
Castilian language, viii. 24, 163,

181, 193, 202, 212, 221, 222,

237, 239-243, 245
Castilians, 26, 93, 94, 95, 96,

212 251
Castille, 48, 54, 66, 92-96, 232, 246
Castro (Le6n de), 166, 167, 168,

173
Catalan language, 241
Catalans, 26, 34, 79
Catalonia, 104-107
Celcstina, La, 144
Corvantes, 48, 146, 147. 182, 227,

237, 241, 242, 246
"Don Quixote," 28, 88, 139,

146, 185, 240, 242, 245
Don Quixote, 30, 151, 207
Sancbo, 27, 33, 40, 54, 242
Cbarlemagne, 62
Church in Spain, tlic, 39, 40,

200, 201, 245-246, 249
Cid, Poema del, 144, 150, 153-

162
Cid, the, 87, 102, 144, 153-162
Clarin. See Alas (L.)
Clarko (Edward), quoted, 21,

239
Clarke (Henry Butler), 79
Claudian, quoted, 48
Climate, viii, 37, 54, 93, 100
Clovio (Julio), 245
Coloma (Luis), 201

Cordoba, 90, 101, 103, 140
Cortese (Paolo), quoted, 18
Creighton (Mandoll), Bisliop of

London, quoted, 44
Creixell, 106-107

D

Dances, Basque, 73

Dante, quoted, 26, 130, 241, 250

Deshoja, A, 230-231

Diaz de Bivar (Rodrigo). Sec

Cid.
Diligcncias, 50, 51, 52
Dominicans, 166, 168
Dress, 53, 54, 77, 106, 135

B

Ebro, the, 100

Education, 140

Edward II., King of England,

63
Eibar, 73
Elgoibar, 73

Emigration, 100, 203, 225
England and Spain, 25, 63, 166
Escorial, the, 9S
Eskuara, 59, 60, 62, 64, 68, 70-

71, 76, 85-86
Espronceda (Jose de), 149
Estella, 81, 217
Estremadura, 98

P

Fernan Caballero, 185-191, 193
Pitzmaurice - Kelly (James),

quoted, 142, 143, 146-147, 185,

195, 215, 227
Flaubert (Gustave), 192, 197
Ford (Richard), 25, 36, 47, 51,

53, 253
France (Anatole), quoted, 30
Francis of Assisi, Saint, 241
Francis I., King of France, 57
Fuenterrabfa, 58, 62, 63, 85-86

INDEX

261

Vturoa, 70, 78, 79

/■ 'uncial offerings, 76

c

Gallola, 314-231

Call,-,! , '.■■. C, 214, 216, 330
Ganivet (Angel), 22

( i;i II i ]>i.TK-.. >, 88

et (Rafael), 99
Gautlex (Tbeophile), quoted,

264,
OeneraUfe, the, 89
Gibraltar,

la, tin; I .'■•. I '•'•. I
G6mea de Baquexo (E.l, 203

G6ng"r;iv \rv,ntr ( I alia), MS

Goya | l'Vunclsco Goya y Luci-

entes], L9 I
Granada, 88 89
Qrao, El, L16, 206

dema, L86, L87
Greco, Ell, 908,948,944 968
Guadalete, the, 187
Guadalquivir, the, L88, I W

Guernica, 76

(,•:„•, ikh 76, 77

Gulpttfooa, 64, 87, 68, 78

H

Hi odaye, B9
Heresy, 88, L79, 173
Horace, quoted, 71

•'. 91
Huerta, the Valencia*, 1 15-116,

i II, L99, I'M, 161,
Hugo (Yiotor), quoted, 47, 49,

. in. 118
Hurtadode Meiidoza(Piogo), 145

[bin, 906, 906

Idearium Eepai ,

II, ■ dfl | I'll :ms, t'>0

Inns, 62, L40 in

Iw/uisition, the, 34, 38, 39, 147,

148, 168-184, 946
Inscriptions, 68, 60, 81, 64, 07,

77-78

Irrigation, 98, TO, 191-194
[run, 62,78. L98
babel II., Qttawt o/ Si>aiM, 187,
L88, 198

James L, h'inj of Aragon,
quoted, 96, 81

Jem, L67, 17G
Jijona, 109

Jixnena, wifo of El Cid, 157, 158,
L60

Johnson (Samuel), quoted, 47
Jo ieph, otHfl of Spain, 49
Juan Manuel, Infante, quotod,
101

K

Kipling (Rudyard), quotod, 50

La Ethune. ,;i

mendi (Manuel de), 79, 74

I ://(> da Tonnes, 144, 145,
150, 909
Leon, 48, S7, 90

(Luis de), 148, 149, 151,

L68 is i

(Rioardo), 28, 94, 94, 211,

212, 249 948

Longfellow (11. W.), quote

99
i oti (Fiexxe) [Julien Viand], 78,

71

i xiw, King of France, 60,

64

Lumbier, 83

M

Madrid. 99, 198, 909, 908, 907,
298, 281, 989

262

INDEX

Maeztu (Ramiro do), quoted, 36

Makhilas, 77

Malaga, 137, 138

Mallada (Lucas), quoted, 22

Manrique (Jorge), 251

Marbot, General, 61

, quoted, 18

Mariana (Juan de), 37, 70
Martial, quoted, 26, 54, 100
Martinez Ruiz (J.), Azorin, 22,

89-90, 94-96, 193, 208, 209
Masdeu, quoted, 19
Menendez y Pelayo (Marcelino),

151, 192
Montana, La, 26, 223, 226, 228-

238
Montano (Arias), 173
Montoro, 140
Moors in Spain, the, 26, 31, 86,

101, 161, 246
Murcia, 90, 114
Murillo (Bartolome Esteban),

249
Mystics, 148, 149, 192, 193, 194,

242

N

Napier (Sir W.), Lieztt. -General,
quoted, 17, 18, 26, 64

Napoleon, 42, 61

Narvaez (Ramon Maria), Gene-
ral, 30

Navarre, 80-84

Navarrese, 26, 83

Norias, 108-109

Novels, ix, 144, 151, 185-238,
241

Ocafia, 90
Ondarrabia, 85, 86
Oranges, Court of, 90, 126
Oropesa, 108-111
Oviedo, 197
Ox-carts, 74
Oxford, 165

Pacheco (Francisco), 245
Palacio Valdes (Armando), 88,

193, 195-196, 200
Papal autlwrity in Spain, 146,

147, 183
Pardo Bazan (Emilia), 185, 205,

214-217 222
Parish Priests, 76, 215, 233,

236
Pascal (Blaise), 148, 171
Pastorales, Basque, 69-70
Patios, viii, 54, 88, 90, 131, 133,

189, 256
Peasants, 71, 83, 83, 94, 100,

110, 120-124, 135, 140, 141,

205, 215-216, 226-227, 229-

230, 240
Pelota, Basque, 73, 74
Peninsular War, the, 17, 64, 65,

81
Pepys (Samuel), quoted, 19, 25,

39,44
Pereda (Jose Maria de), 40, 91,

151, 152, 189, 190, 191, 193,

222-238 242
Perez Gal'd6s (Benito), 24, 29,

30, 35, 37, 150, 191, 192, 193,

197 204, 223, 242
Peroz, Colonel, 61
Philip II., King of Spain, 165,

246, 248
Philip IV., King of Spain, 60
Pic6n (Jacinto Octavio), 201-

202
Pilgrims, 61, 62, 76, 147
Pino, 138
Place-names, 64, 65, 68, 78, 85,

86
Politics, 28, 35, 212
Pomponius Mela, quoted, 86
Post, 56, 59
Prim (Juan), General, Conde de

Beus, 198
Processions, 87, 127, 133
Proverbs, ix, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33,

34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 63, 69, 72,
79, 93, 121, 145

INDEX

263

Q

Quevedo [Francisco Gomez de
Quevedo y Villegas], 29, 39,
144, 148, 150, 242

R

Reclus (Elisee), quoted, 21
Religion, 38, 39, 40, 44, 76, 80,

147, 200
Roads, 50, 51, 52
Romayquia, Queen, 101
Roncesvalles, 62
Ruiz (Juan), 39, 142, 150

Sagunto, 160
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 57, 60, 62,

64,78
Saint-Pee, 78
Salamanca, 87, 164-168, 173-

175, 181-183
Sanchez (Tomas Antonio), 154
San Feliu de Guixols, 104
Sanguesa, 84
San Sebastian, 63
Sansol, 83

Santa Cruz (Manuel), 210, 211
Santander, 91, 224, 232-233
Santiago de Compostella, 61, 62
Santillana, Marques de [Inigo

Lopez de Mendoza], 142, 143
San Vicente, 107
Sare, 64, 78
Scaliger, quoted, 60
Scott (Sir Walter), 185
Segovia, 87
Serenos, 111, 188
Seville, 88, 90, 125-133, 187, 188
Shakespeare, quoted, 29, 41, 149,

246
Sierra de Jaen, 139
Sierra Nevada, 117, 118, 138,

139, 141
Sitges, 106
Smuggling, 57, 58, 77, 205

Socialism, 27

Socoa, 65

Song of Solomon, tJie, 166, 175

Sorolla (Joaquin), 205

Stendhal [Henri Beyle], 189,

192
Strabo, quoted, 98

T

Tagus, the, 54, 161, 202-203

Talavera, 90

Tannenberg (Boris de), 151, 223,

237
Tarifa, 118
Tarragona, 107
Teresa, Santa, 25, 148, 183
Theotocopuli (Dominico). See

Greco.
Threshing, 72, 82
Ticknor (George), quoted, 52,

149, 163
Tiepolo (Paolo), quoted, 19
Tintoretto, 255
Titian, 245, 254
Toledo, 87, 90, 91, 155, 240, 244-

258
Torrevieja, 113-114
Townsend (Joseph), quoted, 31
Translations, 241-242
Travelling, 47-56
Turroneros, 102

U

Unamuno (Miguel de), 212

Urrobi, 81

Urrugne, 61

Usury, 95, 100, 203, 217

Valencia, 90, 91, 115, 120, 160,

161, 205, 206
Valencia Island, 86
VaUncians, 25, 26, 122

264

INDEX

Valera (Juan), 150, 191, 193-195,

212, 242
Valle-Inclan (Ram6n del), 205,

208, 210, 211, 217-221, 242-

243
Vega (Lope Felix de), 33, 149
Velazquez [Diego Velazquez de

Silva], 60, 144, 248, 253, 254
Vera, 58, 64, 78
Vezinet (F.), 214
Villages, 48, 80, 83, 92, 94, 100,

107, 135, 138, 229
Villanueva y Geltru, 106
Vinson (Julien), 71
Vizcaya, 60, 63, 68, 76, 78
Voltaire, quoted, 73
Vxdgate, the, 166, 167, 176-177

W

Webster (Wentworth), 71
Wellington, the Duke of, 17, 78
Wliale-flshing, 63, 225
WitcJies, 231
Women, influence of, 40
Wordsworth (William), quoted,

76,77
Wynn (Sir R.), quoted, 30, 60

Z

Zagal, the, 51

Zola (Emile), 207, 222, 238

THE SPANISH SERIES.

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PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE CONSTRUCTION,
THE ARCHITECTURE AND THE DECORATION
OF THE MOORISH PALACE, WITH 80 COLOURED
PLATES AND NEARLY 300 BLACK AND WHITE
ILLUSTRATIONS (NEW EDITION). DEDICATED
BY PERMISSION TO H.M. KING ALFONSO XIII.
BY ALBERT F. CALVERT.

Crown 4to. £2 zs. net.
PRESS OPINIONS.

" Immense collection of fine plates." — The Times.

" The standard work on a splendid subject."— Daily Telegraph.

" The most beautiful book on the Alhambra issued in England." — Sphere.

" May be counted among the more important art books which have been published
during recent years." — The Globe.

" One is really puzzled where to begin and where to stop in praising the illustra-
tions. " — Bookseller.

" One of the most artistic productions of the year."— Publishers' Circular.

" A remarkable masterpiece of .book production."— Eastern Daily Press.

" Has a pride of place that is all its own among the books of the month." —

Review of Reviews.

" Mr. Calvert has given us a Book Beautiful."— Western Daily Press.

"The most complete record of this wonder of architecture which has ever been
contemplated, much less attempted." — British Architect.

" It is hardly too much to say that this is one of the most magnificent books ever
issued from the English Press." — Building World.

" A treasure to the student of decorative art." — Morning Advertiser.

" It is the last word on the subject, no praise is too h\gh."— Nottingham Express.

" Has in many respects surpassed any books on the Alhambra which up to the
present have appeared in our own country or abroad." — El Graduador, Spain.

" It is one of the most beautiful books of modern times."— Ely Gazette.

STORY OF THE PRINCESS DES URSINS IN SPAIN.
By Miss Constance Hill. With 12 Illustrations and a Photo-
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THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA, and its

Relations to the History of Slavery and to the Government of
Colonies. By Sir Arthur Helps. Edited by M. Otpenheim.
Four Volumes. With numerous Maps. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. net
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COMPANIONS IN THE SIERRA. A Romance. By
Charles Rudy. With a Preface by R. B. Cunninghame
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LADY CHARLOTTE SCHREIBER'S JOURNALS:

Confidences of a Collector of Ceramics and Antiques throughout
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium,
Switzerland and Turkey. From the year 1869 to 1885. Edited
by Montague Guest, with Annotations by Egan Mew. With
upwards of 100 Illustrations, including 8 in Colour and 2 in
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THE PAPERS OF WALTER SPENCER STANHOPE,
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trations, including 1 in Colour and 4 in Photogravure. Demy 8vo.
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FRIENDS. By S. M. Ellis. With upwards of 50 Illustrations,
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THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY. By Houston Stewart Chamberlain. A Trans-
lation from the German by John Lees, M.A., D.Lit. (Edin.).
With an Introduction by Lord Redesdale, G.C.V.O., K.C.B.
Two Volumes. Demy Svo. 32J. net.

THE SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, with a Topographical
Account of Westminster at various Epochs, Brief Notes on the
Sittings of Parliament and a Retrospect of the Principal Constitu-
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Dasent, Author of "The Life and Letters of John Delane,"
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CHARLES DE BOURBON, CONSTABLE OF
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MINIATURES: A Series of Reproductions in Photo-
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Royal and the Princess Victoria. Painted by Charles Turrell.
Folio. The Edition is limited to ioo Copies for sale in England
and America, and 25 Copies for Presentation, Review, and the
Museums. Each will be numbered and signed by the Artist.

15 Guineas net.

OTHER PEOPLE: A New Album of Drawings by
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STALKS IN THE HIMALAYA : Jottings of a Sportsman-
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" Jungle Byways in India." With upwards of 100 Illustrations
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MARGARET OF FRANCE DUCHESS OF SAVOY.

1 523- 1 574. A Biography with a Photogravure Frontispiece and

16 other Illustrations and Facsimile Reproductions of hitherto
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BALLADS WEIRD AND WONDERFUL: With
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THE VICISSITUDES OF A LADY-IN-WAITING.
1 735-182 1. By Eugene Welvert. Translated from the French
by Lilian O'Neill. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and
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CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS. By Agnes Herbert.

Author of " Two Dianas in Somaliland," " Two Dianas in
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UNDISCOVERED RUSSIA. By Stephen Graham.
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A LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS, PRESIDENT OF
THE ROYAL SOCIETY : With some notices of his Friends and
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THE WIFE OF GENERAL BONAPARTE. By

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etc. Translated from the French by Miss Violette Montagu.
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Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

NAPOLEON AND KING MURAT 1808-1815 : A
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MADAME DE BRINVILLIERS AND HER TIMES.
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SOPHIE DAWES, QUEEN OF CHANTILLY. By

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A QUEEN OF SHREDS AND PATCHES : The Life

of Madame Tallien Notre Dame de Thermidor. From the last
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THE ANARCHISTS: Their Record and their Creed.
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RECOLLECTIONS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

By His Valet Fran£ois. Translated from the French by Mina
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ILLUSTRIOUS AMERICANS IN PARIS. By John
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LIFE AND MEMOIRS OF JOHN CHURTON

COLLINS. Written and Compiled by his son, L. C. Collins.
Demy 8vo. js. 6d. net.

JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST., LONDON, W.

FOURTH EDITION

ORTHODOXY

By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

Uniform with " Heretics "

Crown 8vo. $s. net.

PRESS OPINIONS

" Of such verve and spirit that we are carried along before
we know where we are going, but always — essentially — in
the right direction. Behind it is a fine and buoyant
spirit, as well as an intelligence that really illuminates." —
Westminster Gazette.

" Mr. Chesterton has put the whole force of his character
and intellect into the book." — Manchester Guardian.

" Mr. Chesterton's masterpiece." — Daily News.

" Some of the sanest writing Mr. Chesterton has yet done.
In effect Mr. Chesterton is a preacher. . . . All who
would join in the search for reality can find help in this
volume." — Pall Mall Gazette.

" Full of freshness and individuality, of a daring directness,
and marked throughout by a neatness of statement." — Daily
Telegraph.

"What Carlyle would have called a real book or
Bible. . . . Will rank as an astonishing achievement,
and may come to be regarded as an important modern
bulwark of the faith." — Nation.

" A brilliant book. . . . A book inspired throughout
with an inherent originality which glorifies it, and with an
obvious sincerity which justifies it. Mr. Chesterton's book
will stimulate the intellect of every intelligent reader.
Many of his sayings are a joy to the mind, and his analyses
of the differences between Christianity and other religions
is a continual pleasure from the force and originality of the
imagery." — Outlook.

FOURTH EDITION

HERETICS

By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

Author of "The Napoleon of Notting Hill."

Crown 8vo. 5*. net.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

" Thoroughly and exuberantly Chestertonian, bristling with quaint
epigram, droll illustration, and daring paradox, and marked by a
sustained brilliancy of criticism and analysis." — World.

"Mr. Chesterton is an original and unconventional thinker. These
papers are in his accustomed vein ; bright, whimsical, clever, and
amusing." — Daily Telegraph.

" There is here all that jcyfulness in action, easy brilliance, and
skill at the presentation of a case which have made this writer so
delightful a controversialist." — Daily Nnus.

" Thoroughly sane and virile." — Manchester Guardian.

" Passages of marvellous power." — Echo.

" Mr. Chesterton's intellectual gambols are an increasing joy."
— Evening Standard.

" The brilliant maker of paradox finds abundant scope for his way-
ward and delightful humour in his present volume. . . . Every
page contains some witty phrase, some daring flight of fancy, or some
startling turn of thought." — Graphic.

"A book of gorgeous paradoxes and brilliant epigram." — Onlooker.

" A collection of delightful essays bristling with epigrams and flashes
of humour. ... A clever, healthy, inspiring book, and will
greatly add to the reputation the author has already won by his
•Napoleon of Notting Hill.'" — Clarion.

" This brilliant book . . . scintillating epigram and unorthodox
thought." — Weekly Scotsman.

" A volume which makes delightful reading, and the more delightful
because it is impossible to read it without encountering in every
page — in every phrase almost — abundant food for thought . .
his brilliant wit, his verbal and mental agility are as evident as they
are in everything he writes." — ATewcastle Daily Chronicle.

" Mr. Chesterton is as inimitable, as elusive, as pungent as ever.
His wit plays with unimpaired vivacity, his convictions grow more and
more genuine and surprising." — Morning Leader.

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